Isabel is a thirteen-year-old African-American slave working under Madam Lockton, a dirty loyalist, in the novel Chains. Throughout Chains, Isabel changes from an intimated and gloomy young girl to a confident and proud young woman. Many events all through the book help shape Isabel’s character, but a few things were very important to Isabel’s development. Those things are reading Common Sense, realizing that Madam cannot chain her soul, and discovering that Ruth had been “sold”.
Before reading the pamphlet Common Sense by Thomas Paine, Isabel kept thinking that she would never have a shot at gaining her freedom. After reading, Isabel discovered that there was hope and that if she put her mind to it she would eventually gain freedom. On page 233, Laurie Halse Anderson writes, “I laid down one long road of a sentence in my remembery: ‘For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever.’ Way I saw it, Mr. Paine was saying that all people were the same, that no one deserved a crown or was born to be higher than another. That’s why America could make its own freedom.” Isabel then realizes that she does have a shot at freedom and it isn’t impossible to find her river of Jordan. She feels empowered to go out and get her freedom which was
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This event took place on Christmas Day, Wednesday December 25th, 1776. When she is thinking this, she is referring to Madam Lockton. This quote shows a completely different side of Isabel that the readers didn’t know about at the beginning of the story. Isabel starts off intimated by Mr. Finch and Madam Lockton, then gradually grows to become a confident girl and starts to stand up for the sake of protecting Ruth and herself. This quote helped me realize the intense aspiration and desire Isabel had for wanting her