The novel Roll of thunder Essay Example for Free

The novel Roll of thunder Essay For my diverse cultures essay, I will be studying and revising different factors of that time period and place for example the weather, the language, religion, politics, gender, lifestyle. The novel Roll of thunder, hear my cry is written by Mildred D. Taylor. This story was set in the 1930s which is after the depression, were the whole of America went into a slump. The novel is about a young, black girl who expresses and learns about the ways of life in the 1930s. The novel was set in the 1930s, which was during the time of, The great depression. It was set in the less prosperous part of America in Mississippi. This was a time and place when thousands of families like Cassie were poor and considered the lower, working-class. As you go through the book, you find that Cassie discusses and questions certain issues; for example racism and growing-up. Generally people think that informal slang speech is wrong, but it is just an alternative version to the English language. The way a person speaks is often a way of revealing how educated a person may be. The general dialect spoken within a community is a part a communitys identity, for example; the cockney language represents the people of southeast England. In the novel the language spoken has a western style to it. The novel consists of two main styles of speech, but the communities speak the main style commonly. The language is the same as Standard English but with many abbreviations. The local dialect shortens and blurs words together. The weather in this novel plays an important part, because this sets the mood of the characters and it is also an indication to show that something will happen, like in the novel the night whispered of distant thunder. It was muggy, hot, a miserable night for sleeping. This indicated that there is something wrong, so Cassie is being kept awake for the problem to occur. Racism was demolished mainly in mid century, so racism was a big factor in the novel as the story was set in the 1930s. Racism came about when the blacks were shipped in to the country for slavery, from then on the whites considered the blacks as a lower class, and thats what Cassie had to come to terms with. Today there is many forms of entertainment like: television, Internet, music, but early on in the century there was not a lot of entertainment but it was still no good as not many could afford entertainment. The community of Mississippi was a rural area, hence the lifestyle for the Logan family and most others was mainly work, and all families did go to the local church on Sundays for community gatherings as well as services. Generally ladies were thought as housewives but in the novel two of the teachers in the local community school Great faith were ladies, one being Cassie Logans mum, and also ladies had no means to educate or be educated. Early on in the century blacks had no law to protect themselves, but to deify convention at the end of the novel T. J Avery was about to get hanged in front of his own family but Mr. Jamison stopped this from happening by telling them that a fair trial will be held. If blacks were to commit crime then this will not be tolerated under no circumstances, and because the blacks have no law for them this gave an open chance to attack the blacks. Show preview only The above preview is unformatted text This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our GCSE Mildred Taylor section.