Friendship In Night John

Friends and the Future

Becoming friends with someone can definitely have its benefits later in life. Real friends will sacrifice anything for someone, even if it happens to be illegal. In NightJohn, by Gary Paulsen, readers learn that the friendships one makes today, can help them in the future. First of all, after Sarny was writing the word “BAG” all over in the dirt and Waller wanted to punish Mammy for it, John sacrificed himself for her. He said, “‘Let her be. She don’t know nothing about it. It was all me’” (Page 72). He admitted to teaching Sarny how to write the word in order to spare Mammy, and he let Waller take a toe off of each foot so that Mammy wouldn’t have to pull him in the buggy. If it hadn’t been for Mammy and Sarny’s friendship

Not unless the dogs catched him” (Page 82). But on the next page, it says “Wrong again.” This implies that John did, in fact, come back. He came back to teach her to read, like he had promised. Sarny knows how stupid his actions are when he comes back, but it benefits her so much. Moreover, if she’d never become friends with John in the first place, she would never have had a friend loyal enough to come back later to teach her or even anyone to teach her at all. Furthermore, when John first takes Sarny to the pit school, Sarny is overjoyed about learning--and so is John. She is grateful for this friendship as she thinks about his laugh: “He laughed. Love the laugh. Same deep black laugh” (Page 89). She is remembering when she first heard him laugh, which was way back on page 33. The fact that John would risk getting caught again so he could take Sarny to school proves how a friendship can impact someone in the future, and Sarny is realizing how important it is. In summary, Sarny’s friendship with John can teach readers how important a friendship is and how it can affect someone in the future. Friendships can be so beneficial to a person’s life. No one can see the future, so it may never be known if the same opportunity to become friends with someone will ever come up twice. The future may not turn out the same if opportunities to make a new friend are