The 3 paragraphs

In the couple chapters that we read in Nightjohn tells a story of the life of slaves on a slave plantation from a slave girl named Sarny. The slave plantation is in the South. In Chapter Two Sarny hears the Missus talking about buying hands. Sarny kind of knows what money is, but in general money is an unknown thing to the slaves. Sarny found a penny one day and she went to show Mammy and she said to put the penny away. Mammy was the mother figure on the slave plantation. Sarny hid the penny in the dirt and every once in a while she would take it out and clean it until it shined. One day Mammy was praying and got caught by the master. The slaves weren’t even allowed to pray and the masters did not want them to know about God. Mammy prayed all the time even though she wasn’t supposed to. She would pray really late at night so no one could hear her. Another place that Mammy prayed was in the kettle that they used for cooking so that Old Waller, the master or plantation owner, and the rest of the White house to hear her. In Chapter Three Nightjohn was introduced. When Old Waller bought him into the plantation he was walking in front of the horses and not in the cart. He had a shackle on his neck so when the horses it would jerk on his neck and he would have to stop. Nightjohn came in naked with old scars from the whip up and down his back and on his rear end and some on his legs too. Old Waller works Nightjohn extremely hard and long. That same night, Mammy made him new pants and she made pants for all of the new hands. Also that night Sarny, who has tobacco in her dress gives a lip of it to Nightjohn because he said he would trade three letters for a lip of tobacco. Sarny gave him a lip of tobacco because she was curious on what exactly letters were. That night she asked him some questions and then he taught her the letter “A”. In Chapter Four there is much that happens. For example Sarny tells the readers about two guys who tried to run away. Their names were Pawley and Jim. Pawley met a girl in another plantation and would normally come home before the white house got up, but one night he fell asleep and so the masters sent out after him with a dog and they ended up cutting the back of his ankles so he could run and something went wrong so he bled to death that night. Jim on the other hand ran and the dogs were after him and he climbed a tree but his lower half didn’t get up and so the dogs ate everything from his hips down and he died in the tree. The other person that Sarny tells us about is Alice, she was the breeder of the plantation and she ran after being whipped. She went down to the other end of the cotton field before they went after her and she got ripped apart by the dog, but she did not die. Mammy sewed up all the flaps of skin and she ended up surviving. Mammy said she was too tough for herself. Later that night Nightjohn decided to teach Sarny some more letters. Mammy ended up finding out that Nightjohn has been teaching her to read and write. Nightjohn convinces Mammy to let him keep teaching her because when he ran away and got free, he came back just to teach kids how to read and write. His purpose was that when they do get free, they will need to be able to write about what happened during their time in the plantation and explain what the white house did to them. So Nightjohn continued to teach Sarny the letters and that is what happened in the chapters that we read in Nightjohn.

The next story we read was “Mascot” and it’s the story of Malcolm X. When Malcolm X was around the age thirteen it is the turning point of his life. Malcolm first decided to try boxing like his brother did. His first match was against a white boy named Bill Peterson. He lost twice to Bill and Bill was his first and last match of boxing. Malcolm X explained how black people can not just get whipped and come out with their head up. The only place where the black people could whip a white person is in the ring and not get whipped back, well of course if they lost. The next thing that Malcolm describes in the story is his school days. He describes how he acted during school got him sent to the reform school. He went to the detention home in Mason, Michigan first and that was run by Mr. and Mrs. Swerlin. While he stayed with the Swerlin’s he said he began to realize that white people will become an issue with Malcolm later on. Another thing that he realizes is the Mr. and Mrs. Swerlin treat him very nice, but they treat him as if he was a pet to them and not as another person like themselves. A white person will never see a black man as he sees himself. At the reform school that he was going to, he was actually pretty popular and succeeded. He became class president.  The only thing that was still wrong with the school was that they still used the language that Mr. and Mrs. Swerlin used as if he wasn’t just standing there right there in front of them. As Mr. and Mrs. Swerlin treated him like a pet, the teachers and students treated him like a mascot. The next major part that occurs in this chapter is when Malcolm’s step sister, Ella, comes to visit Boston. Malcolm begins to look up to his step sister because she is becoming successful in Boston. Ella then told Malcolm that he should come visit her sometime while she is in Boston and Malcolm took that right off the bat. When he went to visit Ella, he experienced different senses in the community with other black people that he never experienced before. The next event that occurred in the chapter was that he had to go talk to his English teacher, Mr. Ostrowski about what he wants to be when he grows up. When Malcolm told his English teacher that he wanted to be a lawyer, he said come on now Malcolm think realistically. Mr. Ostrowski gave him the advice of becoming a carpenter instead of a lawyer. The strange thing is that Mr. Ostrowski encourages all of the other white students to become nurses and veterinarians even id they are not as good as Malcolm X. Malcolm changed inside after this talk. Malcolm X then ends up moving to Boston with his step sister and he feels a lot happier here than Mason. That is the end of the chapters we read in “Mascot”.

Now to compare The Great Debaters to Nightjohn and “Mascot”. There are many similarities and differences. First The Great Debaters is similar to Nightjohn because they both mainly take place in the South. The Great Debaters is mostly located in Texas and since both of them are in the South, the black people are treated very similar. The one thing that is different with how they were treated is that in Nightjohn they were slaves and in the Great Debaters they were free. The similar concept is that all the racism still took place in both the story and the movie. The blacks still want equal right when they obviously do not have it in either of these. While in Nightjohn there was horrible treatment with the slaves in the plantation with Alice, Jim and Pawley all of those go unpunished and it’s just like whipping black people in The Great Debaters and how that goes unpunished. The similarities between The Great Debaters and “Mascot” are the time which takes place in the 1930’s and in both the black people are free but still want to be completely equal. A couple other points where they are similar is that black people are now educated and the racism still plays a major part. The racism in The Great Debaters and “Mascot” are not nearly as bad as the racism in Nightjohn. In The Great Debaters when James Farmer has to pay a poor white person for hitting his pig. James is clearly more educated, but he still gets treated as if he were below the poor white man who isn’t very successful.  The last similarities between The Great Debaters and “Mascot” are that they both take place in Boston at some point and both Samantha and Malcolm want to become lawyers which is pretty impossible at this point in time. Between all three of this stories and movie they all have different plot lines but have the same theme which is civil rights or human rights which is what we are talking about now. Those are the similarities and difference between The Great Debaters, “Mascot” and Nightjohn.