Book Review Rough Draft
Title of Book: The Light in the Forest
Author: Conrad Richter
MLA Citation: Richter, Conrad, and Richard Zahner. The Light in the Forest. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961. Print.
Young 15-year-old teenager, John Butler, was taken from his family as a youngling and adopted into the hands of an Indian tribe. He now is being forced to move back with his American family to which he doesn’t know their ways of life or even their language. As this report goes on, True Son, a.k.a. John Butler, shows his old (yet new) family what he has learned from being in his tribe. The Light in the Forest is a terrific novel because the author shows how one character can change the lives of many others throughout a difficult
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True Son was going to kill a white man and steal his supplies but his father found him, and beat him to show how he could’ve hurt a lot more than just that man. During the end of chapter 1, leading into chapter 2, the author explains the thoughts that True Son was having when he found the man. They were very detailed and very gruesome, as well.
Quote: pgs. 5-11: Instantly True Son turned and lay on his face again. Inside of him hate rose like a poison. “Once my hands are loose, I’ll get his knife,” he promised himself. “Then quickly I’ll kill him.”
IV. Point #3-Topic Sentence: The white settlers are mistreating the slaves and are abusing them as if they are ragged dolls.
Evidence: White men make the indians feel in the novel that they are inferior by enslaving them, beating them, and using them to go do the dangerous things they don’t feel like doing.
Quote: pgs 110-114 and throughout chapters 1, 2, and 3: “We’ll make them pay by the good ole treatment, but for now, those who aren’t working are to be considered labor.
V. Conclusion-Summarize main point made throughout paper and restate thesis statement.
During this novel, True Son helps the two races see how they are no different from each other and how they can be together as long as everyone has similar
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According to Deloria, there are many misconceptions pertaining to the Indians. He amusingly tells of the common White practice of ...
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“Now go like an Indian True Son. Give me no more shame.” The light in the forest is a historical fiction novel that tells the story of a young boy who resents being returned to his natural parents. John Butler was at the tender age of 4 when Delaware Indians captured him during a raid on his father’s farm in western Pennsylvania. Adopted by a tribal chief and renamed True Son, he lived for more than a decade in the Ohio wilderness until Colonel Bouquet’s treaty with the Delaware Indians called for reparation of all white captives. On True Son’s reluctant journey to the Paxton settlement, he sees an ancient sycamore that symbolizes his predicament. A dead limb points to the white settlement, while a live branch points back to his beloved Indian culture. The conflict in this story turns on these two claims to his loyalty.
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