Theme Of Power In Nightjohn

All kinds of people today can walk around in the mall and use the bathroom in the same place as everyone else, right? In the olden days, black people weren’t allowed to do those things. They were seperated from the white people and were owned as slaves. In the book Nightjohn by Gary Paulsen, a slave named Sarny tells her story of being a child slave. In article by Paul Finkelman, “The Monster of Monticello,” it talks about Thomas Jefferson and all the bad things he did in his lifetime like owning 175 slaves. The two reading materials talk about slavery and how the slaves “masters” acted towards them. Within Gary Paulsen’s Nightjohn and “The Monster of Monticello” by Paul Finkelman, the theme that power is often abused is shown through characters.

The reason the masters started to abuse the slave was because Sarny had been caught writing the word BAG in the dirt. Her master, Waller, saw her and went back to the quarters to find out who taught her how to write. The blame fell onto mammy and was taken out to the field to begin the maltreatment, “The whip snaked out from the buggy seat like it was alive and flicked and blood come on mammy’s shoulder. Big cut. She started pulling but it wasn’t good enough. She strained and heaved and the wagon it moved and Waller kept saying: ‘Faster, damn it, faster’” (Paulsen 71). Mammy does not deserve to be treated this way just because she is black. Waller believes he has all the power because he is a white man. Black and white people are all the same, they shouldn’t be treated differently than us. Every human is the same, and everyone all have feelings and are all people need and have the right to be free. Just because someone have the power doesn’t mean they need to hurt other people with