The Freedom Writers' Diary

1348 Words3 Pages

Government within The Freedom Writers Diary
“Invisible threads are the strongest ties” (Friedrich Nietzsche). This quote talks about the connections that cannot be seen or are not usually recognized and how those are the strongest ones. Connections can be made between almost anything. Sometimes a person has to dig a little deeper or put in a little extra thought to recognize or make a certain connection. The connection between the novel The Freedom Writers Diary and government is one that is not direct; it has invisible threads as one might say. The Freedom Writers Diary by Erin Gruwell is an inspirational novel about a new young teacher, Ms. Gruwell, and her English class at Woodrow Wilson High School. The novel goes through the student’s high school careers from freshman until graduating seniors. It tells the stories of each student anonymously in the form of diary entries, covering all topics from in class assignments to gang violence and the struggles of their every day lives. At first glance it may appear to be just a novel about “How a teacher and 150 teens used writing to change themselves and the world around them” (cover Gruwell), however; underlying connections can be made between the individual diary entries themselves and the government. It is the ties that a person may not instantly make or the connections that one has to search for that are the strongest and most memorable. Erin Gruwell’s novel The Freedom Writers Diary connects to the government through discussing the issues of racial segregation, homosexuality, and the effects living in the projects can have on a person.
The issue of racial segregation and racism is a strong point emphasized through out Gruwell’s novel, and it is also a topic that has been prev...

... middle of paper ...

...omosexuality being a current government issue, and the importance of education and effects living in the projects can have on a person also touched on by the government are all apart of the diary entries written by some of the students in Ms. Gruwell’s class. Her students tell intimate details and events about their lives through their diary entries many of which can be indirectly related to government. The invisible ties and connections made between the diary entries and the government show how all things can be related back to government. Whether it’s a diary entry, a novel, or another part of a person’s life. Although it may require a little extra thought to make the connection or find the underlying ties. The extra thought used to make the connections that cannot always be seen or are not directly made are the ones that are the most powerful and most memorable.

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of The Day Freedom Died By Charles Lane

    1517 Words  | 4 Pages

    Journalist Charles Lane learned about the Colfax Massacre case while he was on The Washington Post case. In his book “The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, The Supreme Court, and The Betrayal of Reconstruction”, Lane spotlights the Colfax Massacre of 1873 and the result of that event. Lane gives an insightful and detailed analysis of the conditions in Louisiana during this time of reconstruction, both politically and socially. He describes the death of over 60 blacks as a result of the horrific attack that took place at the Colfax court house. Lane recounts the Federal and the Supreme Court trials and the aftermath of the criminals’ not guilty verdict.

    Read More

  • Alexander Crummell's The Race Problem In America

    1135 Words  | 3 Pages

    Alexander Crummell, an Episcopalian priest, professor, and lecturer, set out to analyze and discuss “The Race Problem in America.” This piece was written in 1888, following the Reconstruction period after he had traveled to Europe and Africa, lecturing on American Slavery and African-American and African issues. Crummell, when not working outside of the country, resided in the North at various places in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, where many of the countries African-American intellectuals lived at the time. As a professor, lecturer, and priest, the intended audience were members of the society who were literate, Christian, and for the time period, more radically thinking. Due to his relationship with Christianity and the relationship

    Read More

  • Grace Elizabeth Hale Making Whiteness Summary

    355 Words  | 1 Pages

    Making Whiteness: the culture of segregation in the south, 1890-1940 is the work of Grace Elizabeth Hale. In her work, she explains the culture of the time between 1890 and 1940. In her book she unravels how the creation of the ‘whiteness’ of white Southerners created the ‘blackness’ identity of southern African Americans. At first read it is difficult to comprehend her use of the term ‘whiteness’, but upon completion of reading her work, notes included, makes sense. She states that racial identities today have been shaped by segregation, “...the Civil War not only freed the slaves, it freed American racism

    Read More

  • Blacks Passing as White in "The Garies and their Friends" by Frank J. Webb

    1268 Words  | 3 Pages

    The novel The Garies and their Friends is a realistic examination of the complex psychology of blacks who try to assimilate through miscegenation and crossing the color barrier by “passing as white.” Frank J. Webb critiques why blacks cannot pass as being white through the characters Mr. Winston and Clarence Jr.

    Read More

  • The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward

    1056 Words  | 3 Pages

    Assumptions from the beginning, presumed the Jim Crow laws went hand in hand with slavery. Slavery, though, contained an intimacy between the races that the Jim Crow South did not possess. Woodward used another historian’s quote to illustrate the familiarity of blacks and whites in the South during slavery, “In every city in Dixie,’ writes Wade, ‘blacks and whites lived side by side, sharing the same premises if not equal facilities and living constantly in each other’s presence.” (14) Slavery brought about horrible consequences for blacks, but also showed a white tolerance towards blacks. Woodward explained the effect created from the proximity between white owners and slaves was, “an overlapping of freedom and bondage that menaced the institution of slavery and promoted a familiarity and association between black and white that challenged caste taboos.” (15) The lifestyle between slaves and white owners were familiar, because of the permissiveness of their relationship. His quote displayed how interlocked blacks...

    Read More

  • Kindred And The Parable Of The Sower Analysis

    1494 Words  | 3 Pages

    Conclusion: In all, racial oppression and identification is a concurrent theme in Butler’s works that have been discussed. Butler’s examinations involving the sense of pride and passion towards uniqueness and individualism are evident in many different perspectives. In Butler’s works, the passion the main characters have towards themselves in an alien world teach the reader important values and lessons against negativity and racial discrimination.

    Read More

  • Jasper Jones Racism Quotes

    918 Words  | 2 Pages

    Racism and Segregation is a strong recurring theme in the novel Jasper Jones. Silvey has used Jasper, Charlie, and Jeffrey to convey the themes of racism through the book and to send an important message to the audience. He has shown us that making assumptions about someone based on rumours and appearances is wrong and that racism can rise out of ignorance. Silvey’s main message was that anyone can overcome racism and that it is just

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast A Lesson Before Dying

    1317 Words  | 3 Pages

    Segregation is the act of setting someone apart from other people mainly between the different racial groups without there being a good reason. The African American’s had different privileges than the white people had. They had to do many of their daily activities separated from the white people. In A Lesson Before Dying there were many examples of segregation including that the African American’s had a different courthouse, jail, church, movie theater, Catholic and public school, department stores, bank, dentist, and doctor than the white people. The African American’s stayed downtown and the white people remained uptown. The white people also had nicer and newer building and attractions than the African American’s did. They had newer books and learning tools compared to the African American’s that had books that were falling apart and missing pages and limited amount of supplies for their students. The African American’s were treated as if they were lesser than the white people and they had to hold doors and let them go ahead of them to show that they knew that they were not equal to them and did not have the same rights or privileges as they did just because of their race. In A Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass segregation is shown through both slavery and the free African American’s during this time. It showed that the African American’s were separated from the white people and not

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Edwidge Danticat's 'Create Dangerously'

    1627 Words  | 4 Pages

    Words can have a profound, meaningful impact that may alter, shift, and even end lives. In “Create Dangerously”, Edwidge Danticat reveals how words crafted her reality and identity as a woman who lived through a dictatorship. “Create Dangerously” is a nonfiction essay and memoir that focuses on the impact of literature not only in dire times, but in everyday life. Through the use of detail, allusions, and vivid recounting of the past in her writing, Danticat reveals importance and valor of creating art in times where art is a death sentence, and how this belief shaped her identity.

    Read More

  • The Soul of Black Folks by W.E.B. Du Bois

    1897 Words  | 4 Pages

    Present-day debates over racial issues are often viewed on television or in everyday life. When considering The Souls of Black Folk, the readers in the Twentieth-Century America can draw direct parallels to events, stories, and the stories of those in the past to today. The chapter "Of the Coming Of John" helps us interpret the present inequities in educational opportunities. There is also resentment for affirmative action that has been spoken by the dominant white male that reflects the court decision on affirmative action of modern time. The reader can contemplate the passage of Du Bois' essay to substitute the words "colored" and "Negro" with African-American, Nigger, illegal alien, Mexican, inner-city dwellers, and other meanings that articulate people that are not listed as a majority.

    Read More

  • The Alice Williamson Diary

    3370 Words  | 7 Pages

    I keep my journal hidden; the script, the drawings, the color, the weight of the paper, contents I hope never to be experienced by another. My journal is intensely personal, temporal and exposed. When opening the leather bound formality of Alice Williamson's journal a framework of meaning is presupposed by the reader's own feelings concerning the medium. Reading someone else's diary can be, and is for myself, an voyeuristic invasion of space. The act of reading makes the private and personal into public. Yet, for Alice Williamson and many other female journalists of the Civil War period, the journal was creating a public memory of the hardship that would be sustained when read by others. The knowledge of the outside reader reading of your life was as important as the exercise of recording for one's self; creating a sense of sentimentality connecting people through emotions. (Arnold)

    Read More

  • Sociological Issues In Freedom Writers, By Erin Gruwell

    816 Words  | 2 Pages

    Erin Gruwell began her teaching career at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California where the school is integrated but it’s not working. Mrs. Gruwell is teaching a class fill with at-risk teenagers that are not interested in learning. But she makes not give up, instead she inspires her students to take an interest in their education and planning for their future as she assigned materials that can relate to their lives. This film has observed many social issues and connected to one of the sociological perspective, conflict theory. Freedom Writers have been constructed in a way that it promotes an idea of how the community where the student lives, represented as a racially acceptable society. The film upholds strong stereotypes of

    Read More

  • Life Behind the Veil in Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk

    2290 Words  | 5 Pages

    Since 1945, in what is defined by literary scholars as the Contemporary Period, it appears that the "refracted public image"(xx) whites hold of blacks continues to necessitate ...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Freedom Writers

    1010 Words  | 3 Pages

    The 2007 movie Freedom Writers gives a voice of hope and peace in a fragile environment where hate and sorrow battle in the life of urban teenagers. This drama film narrates the true story of a new English teacher, Erin Growell, who is designated to work in an inner-city school full of students surround by poverty, violence and youth crime bands. During the beginning of the movie, the teacher struggles to survive her first days at this racially segregated school in which students prejudice her for being white and ignore her authority in the classroom. The teacher encounters the life of students who are hopeless for a better future and attached to a delinquency lifestyle of survival. In addition, she confronts a reality of lack of educational

    Read More

  • The Struggle for Freedom Among African American Citizens

    1390 Words  | 3 Pages

    During this time, the idea of segregation was a very controversial topic among the c...

    Read More

More about The Freedom Writers' Diary

Open Document