Gary Paulsen's Nightjohn

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The unheard slaves screamed out for freedom and liberty, but their cries went unheard by much of the world. The novel, Nightjohn is about a girl named Sarny who is a slave on the Waller's plantation, who learns to read and write from a new hand that comes to work, named John. Although historical fiction, Gary Paulsen’s novel Nightjohn is considered by many not to be factually correct because it overemphasizes certain aspects of the story, such as the implausible events that take place, but nevertheless they are incorrect, Gary Paulsen describes many incidents in his story as historically accurate by explaining the harsh treatments, brutal punishments, and persistent resistance of the slaves.
To start off, in America, most of the slaves were …show more content…
In Nightjohn there were many acts of defiance such as escaping and learning when they were not supposed to. Many slaves tried to run away some got caught while few made it out. John one of the characters in the story escaped enslavement. Frederick Douglass was a slave who tried many times to leave and finally did so. In a biography about him states that, “At the age of 20, Frederick Douglass stepped onto a northbound train and into freedom.” This means that it was not impossible to escape therefore the plausibility of John escaping was not farfetched. Another part in the novel that some consider to not be reasonable was the idea of a “pit school.” It wasn’t really an idea because there were real examples of “pit schools.” In an Adapted Excerpt from Heather Andrea Williams’ who told her mother's story of learning. “Mandy Jones knew of a young man who learned to read and write in a cave. She also recalled that there were “pit schools” near her Mississippi plantation.” Gary Paulsen mentions schools burrowed into the ground where people would learn. Nightjohn took Sarny down at night to teach her and some of the other children how to read. In both the story and the article they have “pit schools”. The author uses the slave's disobedience in the novel from real events that happened. All the rebellious acts that the slaves showed were actual examples of
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