Sunday, March 30, 2008

Day of Tears: A Novel in Dialogue



Module 6

Lester, Julius. 2005. Day of tears: A novel in dialogue. New York: Hyperion Books.

A pre-civil war plantation owner, Pierce Butler, has decided to sell all of his slaves to pay his gambling debts. In his mind, it's simply a business decision. To the slaves and even to some of his own family, it is is destroying their way of life. The story revolves around the emotional impact his decision has on these individuals, many of them who are ripped apart from their families. The story, told in dialogue, switches back and forth between several different characters. In the beginning, it's a little bit confusing to keep everyone straight, but eventually we begin to see how the characters relate to each other. It uses the literary technique of of jumping ahead and back in time. We see the characters as both young and old and we see their thought processes. Each uses their own speech patterns, which are authentic for the time period. Hearing about their struggles in their own words makes them seem real. In a sense, they are real because this book is based on true historical facts about a large group of slaves who were sold by the Butler family in 1859. The story is well researched using primary source documents from the time period. The setting is authentic and gives a cleaer picture of what life on a southern plantation was like. Author notes at the end provided more information about the actual events on which the story is based. The theme of the story is clearly about the wrongs committed when human beings can buy and sell other human beings. Yet, another theme comes through, a surprising one considering the first. In the last chapter of the book, Emma, a former slave who was now an old woman says this: "all white folks back in that time wasn't evil . . . If your heart hurts when you see somebody suffering, you have a good heart." Children who may feel the pain and perhaps anger at the way the slaves were treated, will also see that there were white people who cared about their plight. To remain authentic to the times, the author makes occasional use of the "n" word, so this book may not be appropriate for some younger children. It is recommended for grades 6-9.

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