Week 1: "Copper Sun"

After reading Sharon Draper’s novel, Copper Sun, I was able to come to the conclusion that she did a good job in presenting the harsh realities of slavery to her adolescent target audience. This book contained many different examples of the abuses that slaves underwent on a daily basis, and it was able to better instill in me the fact that slave-owners saw slaves as property and not as people. This book opened my eyes to the evils of slavery, and educated me on the fact that slave children were often used as gator bait in alligator hunting. The whole gator hunting seen where Tidbit is thrown into the water and barely escapes the powerful jaws of alligators several times for the sheer enjoyment of Clay Derby and his friends really struck me. I had always known that slaves were beaten, raped, and abused, but I never thought that human nature would allow somebody to endanger the lives of another person for the sheer enjoyment of the hunt. I have previously been well educated in the evils of slavery and strongly oppose any oppression to people of color, but this novel brought more shame to white people than I had previously known through the various examples of the tortures that slaves were put through. In the scene where Mr. Derby kills Noah and Mrs. Derby’s love child, I truly believe that the impressions of slave-owners as people and slaves as animals to be reversed. Mr. Derby murders a child that has done nothing in the world except taking its first breaths, and yet Mr. Derby feels the need to shoot the child. This book truly makes me more aware of the trials and tribulations that blacks have undergone in gaining freedom, and it has caused me to look at Martin Luther King Jr. Day in a different light. Previously, I had looked at it as simply a day off of school, but I now understand that he was fighting for hope and for freedom, just like his ancestors had before. This book has for me, and I expect that it has for the adolescent audience, opened my eyes to the abuses and struggles facing slaves at every moment of their lives, but has also showed me that there is hope in this world. This novel expresses the fact that no matter how difficult your situation is, there is always hope and the opportunity to make a better life for yourself.