The Use of Cassie as the Narrator in Taylor's Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry

The Use of Cassie as the Narrator in Taylor's Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry

Cassie is an intelligent, outspoken, self-confident, and independent

young girl who is also the narrator of the novel. Roll of thunder,

hear my cry, is a coming of the age story for Cassie as she awakens to

the true extent of racism in the south over the course of her tenth

year. As she narrates the events, this leads her to mature and grow

up. There are quite a few factors, which need to be examined to

respond to the above question.

By looking through the eyes of a child, we get a fresh prospective on

the way that the society of Mississippi works. Cassie doesn't have any

assumed knowledge and so the readers can ask 'why' with her. Due to

her ignorance, she asks a lot of questions and so the readers identify

with her, therefore there is more empathy. For example, if she was an

adult most people wouldn't explain things to her and the readers

wouldn't get to know important things like 'why the land was so

important' and we learn in chapter one she 'may not understand that

now', but 'Papa said that one day I would understand….I wondered'.

An example of Cassie's naivety and ignorance is the Strawberry

incident when she doesn't realise that the whites have to be served

before the blacks and assumes that 'Mr Barnett has simply forgotten

about TJ's order' so she decides to 'remind him'. We as the readers

get to see the reactions of the people, if Cassie hadn't done that

then we wouldn't see how racist these white people are to blacks.

Also, the novel shows us that not only the adults were affected, but

the younger generation were too. Cassie is amongst both chi...

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...pens to be at

the right place at the right time.

The readers also learns that Children don't play the largest part in

the racial discrimination, adults do and so the adults points of views

and feelings aren't seen much in the novel

Although it is quite unusual in novels to have child narrators, Cassie

is only ten years olds and narrates the whole story successfully. By

the end of the novel, and the end of the year she has grown up and

learnt a lot through all the episodes she has narrated. Although,

Cassie's narrating has its bad points, the advantages override them.

One of the Mildred Taylor's aims in writing 'Roll of Thunder, Hear my

Cry' was to provide children with a sense of identity and history and

by using Cassie she has achieved this and made clear that it is not

only adults who suffer but children too.