Morgan, Kendall, Diana, Kenny

Assignment for April 1-2

What is the main character in your book like? Describe him using words and phrases from the book. Record them here along with page numbers (43).

 James is caring and a loving sn (45, 50, 36)

What important thoughts and feelings does the character have? Use words and phrases from the book in your answer. Record them here along with page numbers (43).

At this point in the book, how does the main character define who he is? Part of the idea of alienation and isolation comes as people struggle to find their identity. Find several quotes from the novel that illustrate this struggle for identity. List the quotes (with page numbers) and explain how they show this struggle.

"Oh that was messed up. I told him I didn't want to see him anymore and walked back through the black neighborhood, into the store, and went upstairs and cried my heart out, because I still loved him. I went through the entier ordeal and here he was getting busy wtih somebody else. The fact that he was black and the girl he was marrying was black- well, that hurt me even more. If the world were fair, I suppose I would have married him, but there was no way that could happen in Virgina. Not in 1937." ( 154 )

           This is significant to the novel because it shows how she did love a black man. How she really did want to marry him. She was upset by the fact that she was pregnant and he didnt marry her, and now that he got someone else pregnant and is marrying her, not to mention the fact that she was black, made her very upset. It affects the rest of the novel because now she wants to keep going back to New York, and get away from it all in a sense. It connects to the theme because it shows her love for her first love, a black man. How she doesn't mean to fall in love with a black man, but she does. How if she could have married him, she would have. But it was the law that was keeping them apart. (morgan)

 ( Kenny W. Period 6)    "  'And nobody'll give a damn neither! Everybody on this corner is smart. You ain't no smarter then anybody here. If you so smart, why you got to come on this corner every summer? Cause you flunkin school! you think if you drop out of school somebody's gonna beg you to come back? Hell no! they wont beck your black ass to come back to school.' And what he said didnt really hit me at first, not right away."  (150)

              I belive that James  initial reaction was that chicken man wasn't making any sense and that James would be wasting his time listening to him. But later on thinking about it, I think Chicken Man makes perfect sense. He basically means that if you drop out of school and are doing bad to get attention nobody's going to care and it's just going to hurt you in the long run. People aren't going to feel sorry for you except yourself and by being mean to James it put a good picture in his head what the reality is, that by dropping out it's not going to do any good except to hurt himself.

(Kendall Milles. Period 6) "They were all trying hard to be American, you know, not knowing what to keep and what to leave behind. But you know what happens when you do that. If you throw water on the floor it will always find a hole, believe me" (pg.135)

                      To me, this was a very important quote to the novel because it says something about Americans. I think it means that they always find there way out of things when something goes wrong.

Lightning presentation UNTITLED.PPTX