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‘Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry’, is an interesting story written by Mildred D. Taylor. A story of courage, love, and pride, are the three words displayed on the front cover and are also the three words most people would describe in this story. The story is an award-winning best-seller book and is definitely a must-read book. The story displays a range of different aspects to do with Prejudice and how the whites treat the blacks poorly just because they have a different skin color.
“We have no choice of what color we’re born… what we do have is some choice over what we make of our lives once we’re here” is a quote located on the back of the book and it is quoting about how it doesn’t matter what skin color you have, it’s your life so you should be able to live it the way you want to live it without being judged. In this assignment, I am talking about the use of prejudice in this story and also how the author uses characterization to position the audience to view the issue of prejudice.
The book ‘Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry’ is about a colored family that has to fight to keep their land due to them being the only black family owning land. The whites don’t believe the blacks deserve the privilege to own land, so they have to try their hardest to not lose their land to the whites. Prejudice is shown in that because the whites don’t believe that a black family deserves land, so they are trying to take it away from them just because they are a different skin color to them. Skin color should never be a reason to treat someone differently because that’s showing a lack of respect and we should treat all different cultures the way we want them to treat us.
The book ‘Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry’ has a lot of different examples of prejudice on how white families treat black families. For example, in Chapter 3, the black kids were sick of having to walk to school every morning, so they decided to catch the bus instead. They stood outside in the rain waiting for the bus driver to pick them up and take them to school. However, as the devilish bus drove closer and closer towards them, the bus driver veered dangerously close to the right edge of the road where the kids were standing, forcing them to attempt the jump to the bank. But all of them fell short and they all landed in the slime of the gully. This is another example showing prejudice due to the author outlining that the white people don’t want anything to do with the black kids by not letting them get on the bus and also yelling racist and nasty words at them out the bus window.
The author uses characters to position the audience to view the issue of prejudice because she wants to make it obvious to the readers that whites are being racist toward blacks. For example, the character TJ is a black, young man who is constantly being used and deceived by a couple of white folks because of the color of his skin. TJ showed up to the revival meeting with The Simms, claiming that the Simms will do anything TJ wants. However, it was just a scam.
After the incident at the Burnett’s store, the white folks were not happy. A white mob tried to murder TJ by hanging him and the Simms were in on the plan too. The Simms portrayed TJ and was only being friends with him so the Simms could get TJ in trouble. This example is showing how Mildred D. Taylor has used a character such as TJ to explain the issue of prejudice.
Overall, Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry, written by Mildred D. Taylor, is a well-written story outlining issues of prejudice by using characters so it is obvious on what is going on. Using characters to view the issue of racism is a well-done idea so the author can get her point across to the audience that racism is a thing that goes on in the world every day and it isn’t ok to pick on anyone just because they have a different skin color. So, this is how the author uses characterisation to position the audience to view the issue of prejudice.
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