north

when linda escapes to the north she does not find anything even close to what she expected to find. when she finally got a train ticket to New York she was confused why she couldn't get a first class seat. when it was finally explained to her she was very disappointed to find the north not as different from the south as she had hoped. when she gets on the second class car she finds it dirty and gross. it is packed full of people and smoke fumes. there are lots of screaming children too. she says that you can get the same treatment in the south, but the only difference about the north is that u have to pay to be treated badly. 

mr. sands

in this chapter Mr. sands promises linda that he will buy her children from Dr. flint and take them to washington where they will be free. when Dr. flint runs into a bit of a financial problem he looks to sell a few slaves, and when he does linda and Mr. sands have come up with a plan to free her children from the evils of slavery. they have a speculator offer to buy linda's children from Dr. flint, little does he know that they are going to Mr. sands and then he plans on taking them north. linda feels like she can trust him with her children, in my opinion this is a bad idea because he doesn't seem that different from most other white men. i think this is going to end up being bad for linda.

chain

linda gets mad when the woman puts the necklace on her daughter because the necklace was a gold chain. she did not want her to feel any such chain. she wanted her to have as much of a normal childhood as she could. much like linda did. the significance of the gold chain is that even if you are a slave and your master is very nice it is still slavery, and it is still very bad. "gold" or not slavery is still one of the worst things that has happened to our country, even if u try to mask it with gold. i liked this part of the book because i thought that this connection between the necklace and chains was a very good one. i especially liked the reference to gold because i felt like that was really important for it to be said from a slaves perspective that it doesn't matter if your master is nice or not being someone's property is the ultimate demoralization a person can have.

interesting passage in text

the part that struck me the most interesting was when she called black men inferior. at first i read it and was confused about why she was contradicting herself, but then i kept reading and realized that this was a really good thought. i had never thought about slavery in this way before. of course black men were not inferior to white men when they are both equal, but when the black man is told every day that he is worthless. when he is repeatedly whipped and not cared for, this would cause anyone to think them self inferior. i think this was one of the most powerful things that she touches on in this book so far.

chapter 1-4 (which i am posting now because its the first time in 2 days that i have had an internet connection)

in chapter 1-4 there were many descriptions of the harsh treatment of slaves. Between mothers watching their sons get sold and people getting nearly beaten to death. She also describes how hard the everyday life for the slaves, it was especially hard to try and keep families together and if they were separated it was even harder to bring them back together. most of the time they would never see each other again. 

the powerful thing about her writing is that it is all written from a slaves prospective so you are getting first had experiences that happened.

COLONIAL PERIOD

The other day in class we got our articles about the colonial period. we are doing a project about the colonial period. from these articles we are picking out important events, people, and dates to talk about in our powerpoint presentation. the first article that i read was about the plymouth colony and their voyage over here in the mayflower. the second article was about the life of a slave. i found this to be very interesting and intriguing. i think that this is a good project that will make us think about things that maybe we haven't thought about before. 

            I was disappointed in the attendance at Gatsby’s funeral. I wasn’t surprised, but I was disappointed because I thought that more people should have been there to support him because even if he was in the middle of not so good dealings he was for the most part a good person and threw pretty good parties.  Only his father, nick, and owl eyes come to his funeral. His father comes because it is his son and he hasn’t seen him for so long he feels its important to come. Nick felt like he was Gatsby’s only true friend and that it was his duty to be there for him. Owl Eyes was only there for symbolism, he represents god and that showed that god was watching, but wouldn’t do anything to help the poor man. 

In my opinion when Gatsby was at lunch with Wolfshiem this was a foreshadowing of events to come dealing with Gatsby’s death. I feel this way because when Wolfshiem and Nick were talking about the other man that died Wolfshiem said that he didn’t go to his funeral. When I read this I was thinking that this could possibly mean that if or when Gatsby dies Wolfshiem wont even attend his funeral. 

Nick finally tells us the truth about Gatsby this late in the book because if he had done it earlier in the book we would have a totally different opinion of him. It is important for the mood of the book that there is a certain mystery about Gatsby, its not till he reunites with Daisy do we find out the truth. Nick saves it for this time because if we knew everything about Gatsby from the start of the book then we would know that he is “new money” and the perspective on people like that in this book isn’t good. That’s bad because Gatsby isn’t really a bad man at all.