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Comparing Book Of Negroes And The Painted Bird

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The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill and The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosiński are novels that tell a story about two protagonists that had to go through great deals of hardship. The Book of Negroes explains the life of main character; Aminata Diallo, who is taken from her African village to work as a slave. The Painted Bird describes the world as seen by a young Jewish boy who wanders small town running from the Germans during World War II. The Book of Negroes has constantly changing settings that get better and better while the settings in The Painted Bird are mostly all disturbing events the young main character encounters. Both of these books have their own way of grabbing the reader’s interest. Similarly, survival played a big role in both …show more content…

In The Book of Negroes Aminata was captured, and became a slave. In The Painted Bird the young boy had to be separated from his family because of the Holocaust. Aminata’s journey through slavery was only tragic at the beginning and continuously shed the tragic tone. However, The Painted Bird’s main character’s journey remained tragic. As the story goes on he faces continuous betrayal from the villagers and because he didn’t know who to trust, he developed severe loneliness. In The Book of Negroes the author Lawrence Hill gave the reader some hope of the survival and freedom of the main character by giving her many natural skills such as knowing many languages and being a fast learner. Meanwhile Jerzy, the author of The Painted Bird tried to show the horrible truth and reality of being a Jew in the 1930s as seen by the quote “Wouldn't it be easier to change people's eyes and hair than to build big furnaces and then catch Jews and Gypsies to burn them?” (Jerzy, 105). He showed how tragic it is and how most people in that time believed Jews were evil and had to be killed. The young boy in The Painted Bird was also always lonely and had no friends because he couldn’t trust anybody, unlike Aminata from The Book of Negroes who had made many contacts. This is evidence to how Lawrence Hill gives hope of freedom for his book’s main character in contrast to the main character of The Painted Bird. The Book of Negroes setting changes always leads up to the better whereas The Painted Bird always remains

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