Racism In Karen Hesse's Witness, A Classic Book

Witness, A Classic Novel

Witness, a Newbery Medal awarded novel, was one of the many novels created by Karen Hesse, a wonderful author who has taught kids and children about the past, has made a very interesting book about life that exists on a foundation of segregation and hatred.

Racism as we all know it is very disturbing, annoying, and is not tolerable. This story is based on life on a foundation of segregation and dangers of racism. This one novel is placed in a small, under-populated city of Vermont, where a family of three, the Sutters, another family of 3, the Hirsch's with a caring person, named Sara Chickering, and some people face many problems and solutions in their lives.

As racism continues on to thrive in the town, Esther Hirsh, becomes a young girl who also faces discrimination only because she was a Jewish. In the same school as Esther, was a young African-American girl named Leonora who faces bully about almost every day, and everywhere, just because of her race. Her family is very well in poverty, and her mother is badly sick. She died later that month. In one quote,”Why can’t white folks leave me alone?”(P7), explains how excruciating racism was.
As the storyline progresses into the center of the story, Leonora saves Esther from a passenger train, everybody knows it as the “Heaven Train.” Esther wanted to meet her mother on the train who died when she was just a tiny little young girl, perhaps at the age of four or five. Leonora understood her but she didn’t want her to go because Esther was perhaps her only best friend. Back in the transition from the beginning of the story, Esther also saved Leonora’s life from the chilling winter cold. Sara Chickering, the caretaker of Esther, fina...

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... the bridge to convince Johnny to get back down. “I’m afraid of the Klan,” he said. Then he surprisingly… just jumped.

All these scenes were all real, it all happened from 1920-1927. Karen witnessed a lot of horrors, but also some happiness. She did that by just simply writing books, novels and poetry. She mostly writes her novels in poetic form, what everybody does not usually do. This book inspired me and a lot to perhaps write a lot about the past, and admire and appreciate the present and what will happen in the future. It also taught me many lessons about the important things, like the history of the KKK and what they did, also the history of segregation and how this country was broken up into pieces and how they were sawn back together. So this book is a very useful tool in learning and understanding and should be brought down from generation to generation...