In “Noah Count and the Arkansas Ark” by Gary Blackwood, the author demonstrates the value of education, and how the boy’s family lacks it. But, in this essay we will be discussing how the son observes that there is more than one type of education.
In paragraphs 1-7, the narrator is sitting at the table listening to a conversation between his grandmother, his father, and his mother. They are discussing how they predict it is going to rain because “the cat sneezed, Granny’s rheumatiz is worse, and the coffee pot boiled over.” To the narrator, this is all nonsense talk. This demonstrates that he finds his family’s education to be absent, and that he is more intelligent because he states that “I’d been going to school for a while, you see, and I thought I knew just about everything.” In these paragraphs, the boy obviously feels that his family is ignorant and dumb.
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His father states “If’n we get a real gully-washer, I don’t know that she’ll hold.” When he says this, he is saying that if they have a terrible storm, he doesn’t know if the levee will hold. Then, the son proceeds to describe the “Ark” that his father sneaks off to build every night. This clearly agitates the boy because he notices his neighbors staring at it and making rude comments such as “Noah Count- No Account.” This put harder pressure on the child because he states that “Lucky for me school was out, or I would have my hands full fighting the boys who call my dad crazy.” So, as expressed, the child feels that his family is getting harder and harder to deal