Analysis Of Jacqueline Woodson's When A Southern Town Broke A Heart

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When a Southern Town Broke a Heart Have you ever felt as a child that the world is perfect and everything is great but then grow up to realize how different it is. That’s how Jacqueline Woodson felt as she grew up. As we grow up, our perspectives of the world changes through experience. In “When a Southern Town Broke a Heart”, Woodson introduces change as a central idea of the story. By seeing how she changes over the course of the story, it seems evident that Woodsen is trying to convey to the reader that one’s perspective of the world changes the older they are. One example in this story is when Jacqueline Woodson is young and talking about her home with her grandmother. She says “We ran off to whatever next thing the summer brought us. We were safe. We were home.”(pg. 1) What she is saying is that her home seems safe and nothing can go wrong. This quote is important because it shows that at a young age, she perceived her home being a safe and perfect. It supports my theme with her naivety. …show more content…

The story portrays this by Woodson saying “We’d been warned to stay away from the small patch of poison ivy that grew around the base of one tree in my grandparents backyard. But until that year the consequences had been as theoretical as the segregation around us.” This quote explains how up until that year for her, she was not exposed to racism. In this quote, the ivy represents racism. She was warned to stay away from it and because of that, she was never exposed which led to her thinking that racism was non-existent. Now she is starting to have a new view view of the world. In this case, it was not as good as she

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