Papers On Nightjohn By Gary Paulsen

It is estimated that 12.5 million humans were shipped and enslaved into the new world, that is 12.5 million men, women and children stripped of their rights because of their skin color. That is 12.5 million men, women and children forced to do atrocious labor. NightJohn by Gary Paulsen is fiction text that describes the life of a young enslaved girl named Sarny as well as her encounter with a strange man whom she names NightJohn. It presents factual descriptions of the life of slave on a plantation that can be corroborated with other historical accounts. Although Gary Paulsen’s novel, NightJohn, is considered historical fiction, the descriptions of support to one another despite the broken family structures, the resistance to conditions despite

NightJohn is a nickname for John in Gary Paulsen’s historical account of slavery. John received his nickname after he escapes the plantation and comes back to start a pit school. The only time slaves can attend the pit school is at night hence the name NightJohn. In NightJohn, John has a firm belief in the power and importance of education, he believes that all slaves need to learn how to read and write so they can record the atrocities they live through. The way he takes action to his cause is by starting a pit school after he escaped from the plantation. But this is not the first method John took in teaching slaves to read and write, during his time on the plantation John taught Sarny to read and write. This is incredibly significant because the law during slavery stated that if a slave was caught reading or writing an extremity had to be removed. This is not only a reflection upon the laws of the U.S. but also the brutality of the punishments. The consequences to a slaves actions were inhuman yet they were still enforced. This law plays a part when Sarny is caught by her owner, Waller, writing letters in the dirt. Waller immediately punishes Sarny because if slaves remained ignorant and uneducated it obtained a system of inequality, the minute slaves started to become educated they gain a sliver of equality to their owners and that was the last thing that any owner wanted. After Sarny is caught for her “crime” Mammy is deemed responsible for her actions and Waller chains her to a wall and then whips her, this is another example of the cruelty of the punishments that took place during slavery. But Mammy’s punishment is cut short when John takes responsibility for Sarny’s reading and writing, and as the law states an extremity has to be removed and that is exactly what Waller does. Waller decides to cut off two of John’s toes