Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
After the Civil War, slavery was (for most people) a memory. But that memory still lingered on in a continuing societal status quo that left black people, on account of their history, with little way to gain money. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is a novel that explores the struggle of a black family to gain and hold onto land during the Reconstruction era. With many white farmers wanting to steal their land and white gangsters threatening their children for the fun of it, this novel is about how truly disheartening the effort of fighting against a longstanding societal status quo can be. From the perspective of a genius black girl, it also focuses on how success in school was discouraged by white students and teachers alike, wanting to create a further opportunity gap that would drive black people to take low-paying jobs that were little better than slavery. Additionally, the writing style is effective in allowing events spanning multiple weeks to unfold within a single chapter without disrupting the smooth, first-person perspective of the main character, Cassie Logan. This leads to a tone evoking the image of a grandmother relaying tales to her children around a fireplace, with that cozy atmosphere permeating the pages. The title of the book is related to a thunderbolt falling at the perfect time to start a fire, causing just enough panic to disrupt an angry mob. The fact that this extreme act of luck (Or divine providence) was the only thing that saved the main characters creates the idea in the minds of readers that families everywhere during that time period suffered what was only threatened in the novel.
The Chase Verdict is that, with its short length, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry is easy to read in one sitting, and is well worth the effort, especially alongside the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, written by himself. Although one novel is fiction and the other non-fiction, the comparison between the two helps to understand how much the Civil War affected the lives of many, and how much more remained to be done before schooling opportunities could galvanize the Civil Rights Movement and end the tyranny of lies once and for all.