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Family Is Everything In Copper Sun

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Recommended: American literature about slavery

An actor named Michael J. Fox once said, “Family is not an important thing. Family is everything.” The novel Copper Sun, by Sharon M. Draper, provides accounts of a black slave and an indentured servant. The slave traders seized the main character, Amari, from her homeland in Africa and shipped her to the 13 colonies in present-day America to her master who is named Percival Derby. She then met Polly, an indentured servant. Not long after their arrival, Amari and Polly were extremely unsatisfied about the abuse they had to endure while living in the cruel master’s plantation. The day after the two were sold, Amari and Polly met Teenie, Mr. Derby’s cook and Tidbit, Teenie’s son. The three escaped with some help from a doctor south into present-day …show more content…

When the fatal ailment named smallpox claimed both of her parents’ lives. When she witnessed Amari crying, there was a flashback in the novel to when she had “wept bitterly when her mother had died of disease as well, but not one tear had given her a bite to eat or a place to stay” (Draper 80). The quote means that losing a family member can cause a person to feel an intense disturbance emotionally. Family is vital for a person because a person will be agitated if a member is lost. Polly soon confided to Teenie that her homeland had nothing “much there but bugs and gators and a few folks scraping the dirt to make do. My mother is dead. My father as well. She swallowed hard” (Draper 99). The quote evinces that people can still feel hurt emotionally after if the incident happened years ago when Polly swallowed hard. This also emphasizes the long-lasting effects of the loss of an important family member. Moreover, when Polly explained to Teenie about her parents’ demise, she “paused, stood up, and walked outside of the hot cookhouse, taking deep breaths. I am not going to cry!” (Draper 101). The quote expresses Polly’s sorrow about her parents’ deaths by forcing herself not to cry and taking deep breaths. It also shows the lasting power of losing loved

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