Historical Accuracy Of Nightjohn By Gary Paulsen

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.

In the years prior to the Civil War, countless black Americans found themselves forcibly bound by the chains of slavery and barred from basic human rights. As identities were stripped by slaveholders denying freedom and equality, slaves were imposed with the burdens of captivity and its inherent evils. As freed people, both Frederick Douglass in “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” and Solomon Northup in “12 Years a Slave” detail the true horrors, hypocrisy, and abuse they experienced while enslaved. Douglass and Northup effectively communicate and depict the slave system to a sympathetic anti-slavery audience using tone, imagery, and irony to enhance readers’ impressions and appeal to their pathos.

NightJohn Simply, regret is a traumatizing emotion for people to have. Many African Americans were a very common target to become slaves and servants to mostly all white men due to the color of their skin. The cause of slavery, the abominable wrong doing on America’s behalf tore apart the equality of men. Although Gary Paulsen’s novel, NightJohn, is considered historical fiction, the descriptions of supporting to one another, brutal punishments, and harsh restrictions can be corroborated with multiple sources.

According to James Ramsey, the treatment and conditions of slaves in 1784 were harsh. They had to work long hours, from four in the morning to midnight, only eating 2 meals a day while doing harsh and intense labor everyday. (Doc 1) The source shows us that the slaves were treated harshly and did long, hard hours of work for the English while getting little to nothing in return. The slaves couldn’t even fight for themselves, they were helpless against the “superior” English.

Novels often depict realistic situations and outlooks on life. This enables the readers to view and learn different aspects through the author’s illustrations. Authors project world issues and opinions through their novels and create stories around them. Lawrence Hill took it upon himself to project the issue of racial discrimination in his novel, The Book of Negroes, through a fictional character named Aminata. The protagonist gets abducted into slavery and experience hardships, tragedy, oppression and betrayal.

Convicts that were leased to plantations experienced much of the same conditions they were subjected to during enslavement. “The prisoners ate and slept on the bare ground, without blankets or mattresses, and often without clothes.” They were forced to live in their own filth, bloodied floors and vermin infested quarters. Punishments were usually carried out with lashings, however, they were subjected to “natural punishments” such as exhaustion, pneumonia, heatstroke, dysentery, malaria and frostbite. Convicts were more vulnerable than free workers, and paid a greater price.

The Portrayal of Slavery in Antebellum Louisiana in Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave In his memoire Twelve Years a Slave, illegitimately enslaved Solomon Northup does not only depict his own deprivations in bondage, but also provides a deep insight into the slave trade, slaves’ working and living conditions, as well as religious beliefs of both enslaved people and their white masters in antebellum Louisiana. Northup’s narrative is a distinguished literary piece that exposes the injustice of the whole slaveholding system and its dehumanizing effect. It is not a secret that the agriculture dominated the economy of antebellum Louisiana (Louisiana: A History 183). Therefore the Southern planters needed relatively cheap workforce to cultivate

“A slave who ran away once would receive a terrible beating, punishment by their slave owners. ”(melyjanex3.blogspot.com. ,2011) The South had security all over the place, it was watched by many police and many slave catchers. So any slaves who escaped their slave owners would usually get caught in less than two days considering how much security they had in the South.

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.

In chapter 4 from the book “Nightjohn” by Gary Paulsen we are introduced to characters that depict the conditions slaves had to endure during the 19th century. The chapter begins with a slave name Alice that is made into a “breeder” against her will by the plantation owner, Waller due to her unsatisfactory work on the plantation. Afterwards, Sarny got a flashback about Jim and Paulwe, the slaves at the plantation where Sarny, the narrator works. Jim was a old man that was tired of his life as a slave--at the plantation. Therefore, he attempted to escape, but he got caught and the dog gnawed Jim’s legs off--leaving him hanging on a trees that he climbed to escape.

Sometimes nightmares come true; and they're far worse than anything you ever expected. This was true for Elie Wiesel, the author of Night. He and thousands of other innocent people were stuck in a seemingly never ending nightmare: being forced into concentration camps by Adolf Hitler. Wiesel’s novel his personal experiences trapped in some of these camps, along with his thoughts and inner turmoil about his religion. When reading his novel you get a glimpse of the holocaust from a young survivor’s point of view, with the intricate writing skill of a college professor (Wiesel 3).

“She don’t know nothin. It was me that taught the girl letters” NightJohn by Gary Paulsen. A girl name Sarny got taken away from her mother when she was born into slavery. Mammy was the one who raised all the young ones, so mammy raised her for the years. Then a man named John came and was there for teaching her to read and write.

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.

In the 1700-1800’s, the use of African American slaves for backbreaking, unpaid work was at its prime. Despite the terrible conditions that slaves were forced to deal with, slave owners managed to convince themselves and others that it was not the abhorrent work it was thought to be. However, in the mid-1800’s, Northern and southern Americans were becoming more aware of the trauma that slaves were facing in the South. Soon, an abolitionist group began in protest, but still people doubted and questioned it.

Slavery is still a concept that the horror and brutality that is learned about in books become just another set of facts to be assimilated impassively to continue working through large course loads of material to be memorized. Dispassionate and clinical summations of the lives of the allowed for the harshness of the existences of those in bondage to become words on a page since modern society is not exposed to those experiences any longer. However, first-hand recollections by former slaves, such as Mary Prince and Olaudah Equiano, somehow make the realities conveyed to become less opaque and more tangible. Mary Prince and Olaudah Equiano were both subjected to being slaves based on the color of their skin.