Johnny Tremain

The Lyte cup symbolizes wealth and social status. The silver cup is engraved with the Lyte crest, “an eye rising up from the sea,” and the family motto, “Let there be Lyte” (26). When Johnny was a young child, he considered the cup “the most beautiful thing in the world” (26). The cup is meant to be Johnny’s key to a bright future, but instead it brings darkness and danger. The contrast between the object’s beauty and its dire effects on Johnny’s life parallels the outwardly elegant but inwardly corrupt Lyte family. When Johnny was a young boy, the Lyte cup sparked his desire to become a silversmith. During his time as an apprentice with the Laphams, he wants to become a master craftsman so he can acquire wealth and rank, the very things that the cup represents.

After his prideful accident, Johnny still dreams of riches and status, but his vision of the future shifts to a life of ease among the Lytes. In Chapter 4, he imagines showing the cup to Mr. Lyte and being welcomed into the family. He pictures himself using his newfound wealth to lavish gifts on Cilla and his former master while the rest of the Laphams receive “not one thing” (75). Johnny’s daydreams show that he is arrogant and vindictive at this point of the novel. He sees his imagined wealth as the power to reward and punish people as he sees fit.

As Johnny soon learns, Mr. Lyte has a similar view of the world. Moreover, the merchant has the resources and connections to enforce his desires. Mr. Lyte takes Johnny’s cup and places it with a matching set of three. By taking from someone with comparatively little, Mr. Lyte demonstrates his desire to hoard wealth. He guards access to his family’s fortune so jealously that he asks the judge to give a 14-year-old a death sentence for stealing the cup rather than sincerely considering Johnny’s claim of kinship.

Later in the novel, Johnny has the opportunity to reclaim what’s rightfully his when the Lytes flee from Milton. However, Johnny now knows how the cruel, self-serving Lytes use their power, and he decides that he doesn't want the cup or anything it symbolizes. Johnny remains true to his convictions at the end of the novel. Before the Lytes permanently relocate to England, Mr. Lyte acknowledges Johnny as his relative and communicates his regrets through his daughter.

Lavinia promises that Johnny will be able to place “quite a claim for property” after the war (274). This promised inheritance fulfills the cup’s original purpose of establishing Johnny’s kinship to the Lytes and securing his fortune. While a 14-year-old Johnny would have been elated at this news, the 16-year-old is remarkably indifferent. Instead of quietly waiting out the war until he can collect his inheritance, he elects to receive surgery that will allow him to join the fight for independence. He no longer values a life of privilege and ease. Instead, he is willing to lay down his life in humble service of a cause greater than himself. Due to the object’s symbolic meaning, Johnny’s changing relationship with the Lyte cup illustrates the protagonist’s growth over the course of the novel.