Paula
Fox, a widely respected author, writes books for children and young
adults. Mrs. Fox was born April 23, 1923
in New York City to Paul Hervey and Elsie Fox.
Paula primarily writes children痴 books, but she has branched out and written
eight adult novels. Some of Paula Fox痴 many literary credentials include winning the National Book
Award in 1983 for her novel 鄭 Place Apart,・and
Paula Fox also won the Newberry Medal in 1974 for this novel being discussed, 典he Slave Dancer・
Paula
Fox痴 ambition for writing 典he Slave
Dancer・was to entertain children and young adults, and yet
at the same time, providing them with a more accurate explanation of the slave
trade--both on the trade and the people behind it. One very good example of the cruelty toward
slaves in the book was the passage when Captain Hawthorne, the Captain of The
Moonlight, spotted the American ship that was going to free the slaves on board
his ship.
・腺y God!・・Cawthorne
thundered. 選 see the ship! I see it. It痴 American! You
disaster stout{a crew member} You致e murdered me! Get the
slaves over! Get them over!・ I cried out in terror as I saw the luminous
crest of a wave in the darkness, and right behind it on the next crest, a
number of small boats coming directly at us, the rowers bent against the
wind. At that moment, Sam Wick picked up
a black woman and simply dropped her over the side. With hardly a pause he then kicked over two
men. Now the slaves, aware of their
mortal danger, sank down, piling themselves up on one another as though in this
way they could protect themselves. They
scratched the deck frantically as the seamen ran among them, grabbing them up
and shoving them to the rail, three black men moved unsteadily toward him,
flailing the air with their arms as though he were a wild animal. Cawthorne instantly drew his pistol and fired
it directly into the face of one of the blacks, and proceeded to shoot four
more woman and children.........・
That
scene seems like it came out of a fiction movie, but it did not. Many of these tragic occurrences happened
every day on slave boats. But the great
ability of Paula Fox to weave a seemingly perfect replication of actual history
in a book is amazing. Has she
succeeded? Most definitely yes. Many of these powerful passages from the
story illustrate the cruelty faced by millions of slaves for nearly three
centuries. Many of these such
occurrences in the story greatly altered Jessie's views about the goodness of
man, his outlook on life, and his fears
involving the slaves. Another good
example in the novel is when Jessie is reflecting on his experience in the
closing pages of the novel.
的n the war between the states, I fought on the Union side and a
year after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1864, I spent three months in
Andersonville, surviving the horrors, I often thought, because I壇
been prepared for them on The Moonlight.
After
the war, my life went on much like my neighbors・lives. I no longer spoke of my journey on a slave ship
back in 1840. I did not think of it
myself. Time softened my memory as
though it was kneading wax. But there
was one thing that did not yield to
time.
I
was unable to listen to music. I could
not bear to hear a woman sing, and at the sound of any instrument, a fiddle, a
flute, a drum, a comb with paper wrapped around it played by my own child, I
would leave instantly and shut myself away.
For at the first note of a tune or of a song, I would see once again as
thought they壇 never ceased their dancing in my mind, black
men and women and children lifting their tormented limbs in time to reedy
martial air, the dust rising from their joyless thumping, the sound of the fife
finally drowned beneath the clanging of their chains.・
Paula Fox痴 careful and
tedious description of the crew痴 voyage on The Moonlight
has created a saddening image of just
what it was really like in the ship. The
torture of slaves, the hardships faced by the crew, and the mental changes that
went on in Jessie痴 head.
These changes resulted in Jessie
never being to listen to music again, to preparing him for the grueling
hardships of war, and to rething his moral values on Man. Mrs. Fox has done a wonderful job in writing
this book--making it entertaining, yet informal; and also giving the book wide
appeal for boys and girls of all ages.
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