Man, things just got real in
children’s literature. Roll of Thunder,
Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor was for me the most realistic reading that
I have had so far in class. The setting for this book is more familiar to me
than the settings in Little House on the
Prairie and The Birchbark House.
I found it interesting that even though those two novels took place over half a
century before Roll of Thunder. A running theme of all of the novels I have
read for class so far seems to be the education of the children characters in
the books. In Kim, the reader is taken along with Kim in his education in
Imperial India. This would not have been interesting except that Kim is
culturally more Indian than he is Irish. In The
Birchbark House Omakayas goes through some very emotional tests and finds
her calling as a medicine women.
In Rolling Thunder, which is told
from the point of view of 9 year old Cassie Logan, the importance of education
runs through on a couple of levels. The novel starts out with the Logan children
walking to their first day off school. Mrs. Logan is a teacher and the Logan
children all have the importance of education instilled upon them all the time.
This theme is also reinforced in the small story about how Mrs. Logan’s father
scrimped and saved every penny to make sure his daughter could get an education
and pass along knowledge to others. But
there were many more lessons to be learned in this book than just to go to
school.
I found it very interesting that Taylor did not
gloss over the harsh realities of race relations that African Americans had to
deal with at the time. This was the most realistic part of the novel for me.
The scenes with Jeremy were probably the most painful for me to read. He seemed
like just a good, kindhearted sweet boy but could only be so close to the Logan
children just because of ‘the way things are’. The instances of what should
have been and fairness and the realities that existed were very harsh for
children to deal with let alone adults. Cassie’s incident in town is an example
of this. Sometimes I think that we as a country have come very far from the way
things were in the setting
Ryan,
ReplyDeleteI agree that Taylor's "Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry" resonates with me more than "Birchbark House" and "Little House." Though I do believe that the setting and time have there parts to play in this, it is the concept of racism and its injustices that still echo today that make it all the more relatable. I can better identify with the characters of this novel and sympathize with the circumstances, perhaps because of what I, as the reader, bring in to this work, being a minority myself and having encountered racism during my childhood. Based on my own recollections, I recall several times where someone was particularly discriminating toward me and/or my companions. The contempt was palpable and although I did not understand it much deeper than that, I WAS aware of being singled-out and struggling to understand "the way things are." I imagine this is what the Logan children had to deal with.
Education is promoted in all the main works we've read for the course, I believe the only difference is the SUBJECT of knowledge. What should be taught and what is deemed as taboo, important, or too mature, varies from each book/ culture/race. Also, as "history is written by the victors", some books (such as "Roll of Thunder") are challenged with the "re-writing" we'd discussed in class and the need to claim a legitimate identity despite diversity and the self-proclaimed dominate group, the whites.
Personally Jeremy character was a little perplexing for me. While his purpose seemed primary to re-established the circumstances of novel's racist environment, and the color line separating friendship, his intentions seemed not all entirely innocent.
ReplyDeleteDespite Jeremy's unwavering loyalty, his character was written to be both delicate and powerless; combined with the high degree of animosity built towards his own family, I feel as if his friendship with the Logan's comprise primarily on his longing for defiance and for a more "outsider" status. This being said, his role seems to be established as 'follower', which firmly limits his characters affluence.
I thought the didactic element of "Roll of Thunder" was really interesting. As Cassie and the other Logan children learn the reality of racial discrimination and violence, the reader learns with them. Through the perspective of Cassie, we experience the confusion, injustice, terror, and anger of being an African-American child growing up and discovering the violent racism in 1933 Mississippi. I think the character of Jeremy showed that not all white kids were racist, yet the caution taught by David shows the extreme complexity and difficulty of developing cross-racial relationships in a society defined by race and racism.
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