"Sarny, A Life Remembered" By: Gary Paulsen
Character Descriptions
The characters in this story are some very interesting people. They each lead their own way of life, and have their own interests at heart. Some of the main characters in this novel are: Sarny, Lucy, Miss Laura, Bartlett, Stanley, and Sarny's two children Little Delie, and Tyler. Sarny is the central character in this book. She is clever and knows exactly what to even in the worst of times. She is very emotional though, and can break down and cry when the slightest of things happens. This is perhaps from what she has experienced as a slave earlier on in her life. Sarny is fond of teaching people, as a friend named Nightjohn once taught her. Lucy is Sarny's close friend. She is also quite wise, but is a bit too optimistic at times. She never stops smiling and is very friendly. However, she does help Sarny find her lost children. Miss Laura is a middle-aged woman who lives a very luxurious life. She gives Sarny and Lucy a place to live and offers them employment. She also finds Sarny's children for her. Bartlett works for Miss Laura as well. He is a quiet and patient man who is helpful and quite kind. He was however castrated as a young slave boy, and cannot have children. Stanley is Sarny's second husband, for her first died from being worked to death on the plantation. Stanley is a gentle, big, fun-loving man, but is not intimidated by anything. This leads him to his death when he gets mad at a white man, and is confronted by the Ku Klux Klan. Little Delie and Tyler are Sarny's lost children. After she recovers them, and they grow up, Little Delie starts to like business, while Tyler wants to become a doctor.
Protagonist
The protagonist, or main character of this story is of course Sarny. She was never born with a last name as she grew up on a plantation as an African-American slave. When Sarny gets her children sold to another plantation owner, she is deeply hurt. However, when she is set free by the Union troops, she goes and looks for her children right away. Sarny meets quite a few people along the way, but eventually finds her beloved children.
Antagonist
The antagonists of this story are the white racist people of the South. Waller, the plantation owner, who once owned Sarny and sold her children; the gray Confederate soldiers who are fighting for slavery to stay; and the people who keep burning Sarny's schools down, and kill her husband.
In the book the main characters are Jay Berry, Daisy, Rowdy, Grandpa, and the monkeys. The secondary characters are Ma, Pa, Grandma, and Sally Goodin. The beginning started with Jay telling about how his family moved to the Cherokee hills. The book ended with Jay giving his money to Daisy to fix her leg. In the end he ended up getting his pony and twenty-two as well. Money was a problem for Daisy up until the end of the book. There
Mapes, the white sheriff who traditionally dealt with the black people by the use of intimidation and force, finds himself in a frustrating situation of having to deal with a group of black men, each carrying a shotgun and claiming that he shot Beau Boutan. In addition, Candy Marshall, the young white woman whose family owns the plantation, claims that she did it. As each person tells the story, he takes the blame and, with it the glory.
In this book each of these four relate to a specific group in American Society. Candy relates to the old, Lennie to the mentality disabled, Crooks to the African American, and Curly's wife to the women.
Minor Characters: Miss Emma is Jefferson’s grandmother. She is the one who had the whole idea of Grant going up to the jail and talking to Jefferson, showing him that he is a man. Tante Lou is Grant’s aunt. She is the person who raised Grant to be the good, kind person that he is. She is also the one who talked Grant into talking to Jefferson. Vivian is Grant’s girlfriend; she is Grant’s encouragement. Whatever problems he has, he always talks to her about them and she makes him feel better, and helps him through them.
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Heroism and villainy are two things that every story has. There is no escaping it. Whether the story is fiction or non-fiction, there is always a protagonist and antagonist, hero and villain. What a lot of people might miss is the heroism and villainy in the history of humanity and our present day lives. I think Lawrence Hill was able to capture this commonly overlooked concept in The Book of Negroes. Although the book shows the evil villainy behind the slave trade, its main focus is on acts of heroism as the main character is a heroic “black” in a world made for “whites”. Before even reading one passage from the book, it is easily perceivable through history that the white peoples are the villains of the slave trade and the 1700’s in general. Hill magnifies this opinion while also creating a protagonist to show how the black
In the first section of the book it starts off with a little girl named Tasha. Tasha is in the Fifth grade, and doesn’t really have many friends. It describes her dilemma with trying to fit in with all the other girls, and being “popular”, and trying to deal with a “Kid Snatcher”. The summer before school started she practiced at all the games the kid’s play, so she could be good, and be able to get them to like her. The girls at school are not very nice to her at all. Her struggle with being popular meets her up with Jashante, a held back Fifth ...
The main character in the book was Thomas small; he is a young boy about 12 years old. He is shy and timid but is very mature for his age. He sees things for how they should be, and he often gives too much due to his kind-hearted nature. Thomas best friend is Pesty Darrow a girl his age who lives on the property that borders theirs. The Darrows are a feuding family and believe that there is gold buried on the Small’s land. They feel that it should belong to them and pull many risky stunts to try and find it. Mrs. Darrow is Pestys mother and the key to many secrets of the house and the tunnels that were once apart of the Underground Railroad. Due to her mental illness, she cannot speak and remember things clearly. Thomas’s father has known the location of the gold, and being the good man that he is, arranges for the Darrows to find it. He did this so they could live next to each other without feuding.
...e on her part. Throughout the story, the Mother is portrayed as the dominant figure, which resembled the amount of say that the father and children had on matters. Together, the Father, James, and David strived to maintain equality by helping with the chickens and taking care of Scott; however, despite the effort that they had put in, the Mother refused to be persuaded that Scott was of any value and therefore she felt that selling him would be most beneficial. The Mother’s persona is unsympathetic as she lacks respect and a heart towards her family members. Since the Mother never showed equality, her character had unraveled into the creation of a negative atmosphere in which her family is now cemented in. For the Father, David and James, it is only now the memories of Scott that will hold their bond together.
Within Tennessee Williams's story about love and abuse within marriage and challenging familial ties, there lie three very different characters that all see the world in vastly different ways. These members of a family that operate completely outside of our generation’s norms, are constantly unsure of themselves and their station within the binary not only of their familial unit, but within the gender binary that is established for them to follow. Throughout the story of the strange family, each character goes through a different arch that changes them irrevocably whether it is able to be perceived or not by those around them. The only male, Stanley is initially the macho force in the home who controls everything without question. He has no consequences for his actions against his wife and is never held accountable for treating the people around him poorly; this lasts until Blanche arrives. Blanche is an outwardly demure, but spirited young woman who after experiencing untold misfortune breaks mentally and decides to no longer care what others may think of her. She lives her life lavishly and foolishly by having dalliances with younger or richer men who shower her with gifts and attention to get sex from her all too willing form. Her effect on Stanley is one of temptation and challenge; she continually tries to convince her sister that she is too good for the man and in turn fosters a resentment for her in him. Stella acts as the antithesis of Stanley and Blanche’s extreme personalities. She is innocence and purity where they are the darkness that threatens to overtake her life. Throughout, Stella is a pawn that they both try to use against the other to no real avail as she is determined to make the best choice for herself. In th...
Starting the book is about the most painful thing (almost as painful as a head on collision with a semi on the highway.) Never the less once the characters become more apparent, and a type of plot is reveled, things get more interesting. It doesn’t take to long to get into the book, and learn something interesting about the characters. All of them have something in common which is a brilliant way to bring all of them together. Addie is the mother of the Bundren family and wife to Anse. She is on her deathbed, and the characters all revolve around this each reacting in a different way. Darl is the most level headed about the situation (at first), Jewel is more horse, Dewey is rather devastated, Anus is rather insensitive, and so on.
Sarah Grimké struggled against the dictates of her family, society and religion. Sarah grew up in a large family, her father was a Jurist and her mother overlooked the home and yard work. Sarah had a certain standard which she was expected to mold into the perfect Southern Belle who marries a well off lad from a respected family, but Sarah had issues filling the mold. It all began when Sarah witnesses Miss Rosetta, a family slave, get whipped. This experience scared Sarah in one of the worst ways it made he go muted for several weeks, and once she got her voice back she had a stutter. But this experience also planted the seed of an early abolitionist. On Sarah’s eleventh birthday Sarah received her own personal slave, named Hetty, But Sarah despised the thought having a slave of her own, so she snuck into her father’s office and wrote up a document declaring that she wished to free Hetty. Sarah latter found the document ripped up by her mother. Sarah was devastated that she had a slave that she could not free. Latter on her father
The main character in this story is Cassie Logan. She and her three brothers go through an extremely tough time in this story. They go through everything from racist driven petty things to the death of a friend. Cassie's age contributes a lot to this story. Since Cassie is about 10 years old she doesn't fully understand everything that happens and why they happen. This book is written in first person so the reader knows her thoughts and feelings, but not everyone else's. This provides a better grasp on Cassie's inner conflicts.
The story follows three girls- Jeanette, the oldest in the pack, Claudette, the narrator and middle child, and the youngest, Mirabella- as they go through the various stages of becoming civilized people. Each girl is an example of the different reactions to being placed in an unfamiliar environment and retrained. Jeanette adapts quickly, becoming the first in the pack to assimilate to the new way of life. She accepts her education and rejects her previous life with few relapses. Claudette understands the education being presented to her but resists adapting fully, her hatred turning into apathy as she quietly accepts her fate. Mirabella either does not comprehend her education, or fully ignores it, as she continually breaks the rules and boundaries set around her, eventually resulting in her removal from the school.
The issue of Slavery in the South was an unresolved issue in the United States during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. During these years, the south kept having slavery, even though most states had slavery abolished. Due to the fact that slaves were treated as inferior, they did not have the same rights and their chances of becoming an educated person were almost impossible. However, some information about slavery, from the slaves’ point of view, has been saved. In this essay, we are comparing two different books that show us what being a slave actually was. This will be seen with the help of two different characters: Linda Brent in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass in The Narrative of the life of Frederick