- Stand up for yourself
- protect the ones you love
- Segregation is unfair/ Racism is unfair
These are some of many possible themes in the book Roll Of Thunder Hear My Cry. The most important one, or the one that really stood out to me being "Segregation is unfair". I chose this because the story revolves of a family right after slavery was abolished, but there where many signs of segregation still happening. The story talks about the hard ships of this poor family, because of the depression which was happening at the time. Adding in the segregation between whites and African Americans made it even harder to go about a happy life.
In the story, there are so many different examples of Segregation, and how it affects the Logan's Family (The main family in the book). For example, in page 98 Mama had said, "The Wallaces did that, children. They poured kerosene over Mr. Berry and his nephews and lit them afire." The Wallaces, are an evil family that run a store in which many people purchased their farming supplies. They had set Mr. Berry on fire only because he had been accused of looking at other women while he was married, which he never did.
Another example would be in chapter five, when Big Ma had taken Cassie, TJ and Stacey to Strawberry (a town). As Cassie was returning back to the wagon, she accidently bumped into Lillian, a white girl who hated Cassie more then anything. Cassie had already apologized but Lillian wanted Cassie to get on the street, when she refused Lillian's father shoved Cassie to the ground and demanded she apologized. When she was forced to apologize, she did, but went crying afterwards back to the wagon. Big Ma, the person who forced her was scared of what would happen to them if she didn't apologize, since they where African American and he was white, which could of meant severe punishment for disrespecting a white, or a higher class.
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