The story’s protagonist, Almanzo must change and grow to achieve his goals. He wants to be seen as a mature boy—one old and wise enough to achieve his main goal of owning and training his own horse. Almanzo is patient, gentle, thoughtful, hard-working, and fun-loving. He adores his family, horses, and animals. He greatly admires Father, who he thinks is one of the “most important” men in their state because of his incredible farm, family, and reputation as an exceptional horse-trainer and farmer. Almanzo wants to be viewed with respect as being as smart, honest, and capable as Father, and the story portrays this multiple times through his trying to impress Father or friends by completing more mature tasks, such as taming horses or carrying logs on his bobsled with Star and Bright. Although he’s the youngest, he’s expected to provide hours of work daily, always giving his best effort to each of his chores—from cleaning the horse stalls to putting wood in the stove to polishing his shoes. During this time period, children were more independent, so Almanzo wants to be viewed as more than capable of completing any task to prove himself, taking pride in helping provide for his family and the farm animals.