The book NightJohn is a novel written by Gary paulsen, a slave named NightJohn becomes friends with another slave named Sarny. John teaches her how to read and write and Sarny gives him tabacco. In slavery you're not supposed to learn how to read or write but that didn't matter to John. John and Sarny looked out for each other and tried to help other people because slavery is wrong and they knew that. Friends look out for you and teach you new things, be kind and treat everyone the way you want to be treated.
For here on, Sarny was a kind girl but lived a hard life she didn't let that affect her though. Sarny was a slave and couldn't live with her birth mom because where Sarny came from people would take the children's mother known as “breeders” and send them away from their family so they could live with someone else and become Field hands. Sarny has gotten taught how to read and write by this guy named John. John is an escaped slave that goes around
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John tried escaping slavery before so he got whipped a lot but John is a strong guy and lived through it. All though John has gotten hurt so many times he had still done reckless things such as teaching Sarny how to read and write because he knew that there was a punishment for that (page 54). Sarny was a young girl with an opened mind and she just wanted to learn but being slave it was hard for her to do that.
Lastly, in the book NightJohn the quote “ School-we got to go to school. Don't you want to learn the rest of the letters?” is saying that John wants to be able to teach Sarny how to read and write. John is being a good friend because he knows the punishment he will get for teaching Sarny but he wants to help her out. Why make other people your slaves when they're human as well? Friends look out for you and teach you new things, be kind and treat everyone the way you want to be
Friday Night Lights, by H.G. Bissinger, follows the Permian Panthers, a successful high school football team in Texas, while they do everything in their power to win the state championship. Near the beginning of the book, we learn about the star running back on the Panthers, Boobie Miles, and how he has college coaches all over the state who are offering him scholarships to come and play for them. Unfortunately for both Boobie and Permian, Miles injures his knee before the season even starts which forces the team to fall back on the second string running back. Boobie’s knee injury was not the only thing that bothered him, he deals with a lot of racial discrimination also. “The black population in Odessa was quite small- about 5 percent” (102).
Knowing is good, but knowing all is better. Based on an actual incident, Gary Paulsen's book Nightjohn showcases this life lesson. In the story young Sarny, a slave, is taught to read and write by a fellow slave, John. She knows that as a slave that reading is dangerous. But she takes that chance, because she knows wisdom is sharper than any weapon.
Have you ever thought of yourself as a person who has the guts to do anything, but in reality when it comes time to actually do something you back out of it? In the book Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand Louis “Louie” Zamperini had partaken in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany. Not long after Louie had competed in the games he had continued on his path to success to join the U.S. Air Forces in 1940, right around when World War II had begun. When Louie and his fellow crew members were flying over the Pacific Ocean in their B-24D Army Air Forces bomber one day in May of 1943, they had crashed into the ocean due to two engine failures. After crashing into the Pacific there were only three survivors; Louie, pilot Lieutenant Russell Allen
Quincy and Biddy, two 18 year old Special Education students who have just graduated from High School, and are relocated to an elderly woman’s house who they call Miss Lizzie and Lizbeth. While they live there they both have jobs, Biddy is Miss Lizzie 's house keeper and Quincy is an employee at a grocery store down the street. Biddy’s mental disabilities came from not having enough oxygen in the womb, she was abandoned by her mother to be raised by her cruel grandmother who didn 't think well of Biddy. When Quincy was 6 years old she received a head trauma wound from her mother 's abusive boyfriend, and since then she bounced around the foster care system ever since then.
Louie Zamperini went through more pain and suffering than most people will ever endure in their entire life. In the book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, Louis Zamperini was an Olympic runner. He was drafted during World War II . During the war, his plane crashed in the middle of the ocean and he was stranded with little resources to survive. This book follows his incredible story battling starvation and abuse in Prisoner of War camps (POW).
Numerous things have occurred in history that most people either believes is false, or denies that it has happened, one of which being slavery. In the realistic fiction novel NightJohn by Gary Paulsen, Paulsen describes the life of Sarny as she goes through the struggle of being slave. Information such as brutality, family seperation, and acts of kindness can be corroborated with Nightjohn through Fredrick Douglass, Mingo White, and Solomon Northup. Multiple examples of brutality can be seen in Nightjohn, the most prominent being whipping and the use of dogs to hunt down slaves. The first act of brutality to be read is whipping, where Sarny reports that slaves would be whipped for going too slow.
His year with Covey was a life changing experience. Under Covey, Douglass worked the land day and night in all weathers. For the first six months he was constantly beaten and severely punished to increase his productivity. He was whipped with sticks or cow skin. Douglass experienced an “epoch in my humble history,” and explains to readers that “You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.”
Douglass managed to overcome the maltreatment of his wretched slave owners through the eventual attainment of freedom. The injustice imposed upon the African-American slaves by their owners was the crux of Douglass’s motivation to escape this inhumane life. Adolescents in today’s society could use Frederick’s determination as an example of moving forward to better oneself or one’s situation regardless of
In chapter 4 of the book Nightjohn by Gary Paulsen the chapter focuses on why the slaves don’t run away and why Nightjohn is teaching slaves how to read and write. Chapter four starts off with a girl named Alice who is mentioned to be weird. But when she goes to the breeding shed she freaks out and becomes even more crazy. She is so crazy she runs away but eventually gets caught and has to be sewn back together. Then Jim is mentioned, another slave who ran away.
Through his story, Douglass proves that slavery has negative effects on slaveholders. He uses imagery, flashbacks, and characterization to persuade the reader of the true nature of slavery. His deep thoughts and insights of slavery and the unbalanced power between a slaveholder and his slave are unprompted for a social establishment. Douglass insists that slaveholding fills the soul with sadness and bitter anguish. In addressing effects of slavery on masters cause one man to rethink his moral character and better understand the laws of humanity.
His “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave”, (Document G) makes emotional reading (lurid descriptions like "bitterest dregs of slavery" or "broken in body, mind, and soul" elicited reactions of disgust and dejection, which is the what abolitionists were hoping for) and showed that ultimately a slave, long thought to be a possession and less than human, was very much a person with reason and intellect. It provides unsurmountable proof that like any man, a slave deserved a life of dignity and liberty. His work shed light on the constant hard-working and abusive lifestyle that slaves
He had only read books about slavery and that discouraged him. This made him feel beaten down by his abilities. He faced great hardship due to his mental image of himself. He had to overcome the challenge of facing himself. Alexie and Douglass faced their hardships of their economic status and education by learning how to read and write.
Throughout the narrative, the author includes his personal stories about experiencing the violence of slavery first-hand. For example, on page 20, he writes about the first time he witnessed a slave, his own aunt, getting the whip. “The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest…I remember the first time I ever witnessed this horrible exhibition… It struck me with awful force. It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery…” The author including his experience of his aunts whipping, in detail, appeals to the emotions of the reader.
Furthermore, Education opened Douglass’s eyes to the reality of his injustice as a slave; thus, compelling him to action as he recalls, “In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. ”(Douglass, 2014, p.133) Education caused Douglass heartache. While attaining his education benefited Douglass, he could not relate to his fellow slaves. The fellow slaves had the ability to remain content with their current state of being since it was all they had ever known. Douglass knew otherwise and longed for the forbidden life as a free man, as it changed from an unattainable idea into an achievable
What common themes bond together the literary works of the 1800’s? Frederick Douglass and Kate Chopin both realized that people were not being treated fairly and thus it influenced their writing. Through personal experiences and observations Frederick Douglass conveyed how African Americans in My Bondage and My Freedom were treated unfairly. Kate Chopin used the plot to show how women were treated unfairly in “The Story of an Hour”. My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass tells of some of the experiences he went through as a slave.