2- Analyze how dialogue or specific incidents reveal information about characters. Make sure to include textual evidence.
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This week I've finished reading this short story, that's really different from other stories I've read. I know that many others have or are going to post blog posts about this book, but I really wanted to write about this story this week, because the word choice, and dialogue have really made an impact throughout. For those who don't know what "NightJohn" is about, I'll give a brief summary. This book is about slavery, and how it was back then. There's Sarny a young female slave who is willing to take a risk to learn reading and writing. She learns from the one and only NightJohn who had escaped to freedom, but had came back to teach, knowing what the punishments were. Not to mention that the punishments, were really brutal.
Now, the word choice has impacted the meaning or tone of a text in many ways. In the story when Sarny, Mammy (another slave in the story), and other slaves talk, they use certain words that aren't exactly the best to use. You can also tell by their wordchoice that they're not really educated, and that they could potentionally have an accent. For example in chapter 4 NightJohn states, "There be lots of letters and each one means something different. You got to learn each one." He uses the words "got" and "be" a lot than usual, and when you read the sentence in your head, you kind of here southern accent. Not only that, but they were expected to talk like this as well. If there were to be a slave who spoke more intelligent, slave owners could tell, and would assume that someone was educating them, or they were educating themselves. These slaveowners would then hang them, starve them, whip them, and could even kill them.
There are also a lot of specific incidents or dialogue that reveal information about the characters. But I'll name a specific incident that happened in chapter 5. In that part, it had stated from Sarny's point of view, "I rubbed it out with my heel and wrote it in a new place. BAG. Wrote it all over. BAG. BAG.BAG." From this I can conclude that since Sarny had wrote that word over and over again, she was excited that she was able to spell out and write a word. This shows that Sarny was enjoying being educated, and was actually improving with her skills, even though there was still the chance of her getting caught.
Leanna, I agree that the word choice used in NightJohn really changed the meaning of many things in the book. I think that word choice had to be the biggest factor in the book because the author needed to show the differences between John and the other slaves. This was a great analysis blog!
ReplyDeleteLeanna,
ReplyDeleteI loved this Blog! I know when I wrote my Night John Blog for this prompt, I stressed some of the same things you did. It's important to show how dialogue reflects Slaves education, and Southern dialect. It not only gives you an idea of how Slaves speak, but also sets the story in a way the is not completely explicit. I also enjoyed that at the end of your blog, you went back to talking about how dialogue can help explain the characters in some instances. The example/textual evidence you used really helped support your claim!