Josiah's Reviews > Nightjohn

Drama, adventure, science fiction, comedy, transcendentalism, memoir, how-to...Gary Paulsen has written in many genres, but some of his finest work is historical fiction. Though Nightjohn is a slim novel, Mr. Paulsen poured years of research into this true story of courage under oppression. In 1850s America, twelve-year-old Sarny has served her white master, Clel Waller, for as long as she remembers. The Waller plantation isn't as bad for her as for some other slaves, who work themselves to death in the sun-scorched fields under threat of Waller's deadly whip. Sarny is restricted to lighter work until she comes of age to breed, at which time she'll be forced to bear children to be sold as slaves. Old Delie acts as Sarny's mammy, and though they aren't biologically related, she watches over Sarny as though she were flesh of her flesh. Waller's slaves have to be careful not to anger their master or punishment will be bloody and brutal, and mammy does a good job keeping herself and Sarny out of trouble. That is, until a slave named John arrives.

John is brought to the plantation naked and in chains, immediately forced to do back-breaking labor in the fields, but the first night he beds down among the slaves, Sarny can tell he's different. John carries himself with an assurance beaten out of most blacks during childhood. With Waller asleep in the big house, John asks the slaves for chewing tobacco. In return, he can teach the first three letters of the alphabet. Sarny doesn't know much about letters, but she has a pinch or two of tobacco set aside for a situation like this. She accepts John's offer; mammy has warned her before that reading and writing is forbidden to slaves, but Sarny can do her learning away from Waller's jaundiced eye.

Drawing letters in the dirt with John is the first faint beam of illumination in Sarny's mind. Some nights he's too weary to give the lesson, but over time he adds "D, E, F, G, H, I, and J" to her expanding alphabet, and shows her how to link the letters to form a few basic words. A girl born and bred to serve an evil master, not allowed to make the smallest investment in a free future for herself, has somehow learned the first ten characters of the English alphabet. The power of these letters imprinted in her mind is intoxicating, and the excitement leads to carelessness. When Waller discovers Sarny cheerfully scrawling letters in the dirt, he's enraged that one of his slaves is learning to write. With bloodwrath in his eyes he demands she say who taught her, but a terrified Sarny refuses to betray John. Waller knows worse ways to hurt the girl than beating her; he can turn his violence on mammy until Sarny is unable to remain quiet. Waller will whip mammy to the point of death if necessary to find out who is teaching letters to the slaves, but mammy is prepared to suffer with dignity if it means protecting Sarny's ability to enrich her mind. How far will a few letters in the dirt ultimately take Sarny?

Slavery in the United States prior to the Emancipation Proclamation depended on keeping slaves ignorant. If they were privy to national news, they might hear of activists and politicians clamoring to free the slaves, stirring them to hope for their own eventual liberation. Learning to read might prompt a slave to pick up a book and study America's founding principle of universal liberty, a value opposed by those who claimed blacks didn't possess the same natural rights as white people. Whenever rich upper classes exploit the disadvantaged to retain political power, they do it by pretending to be their highly educated guardians who must tell them what to think and how to act. "Why they be cutting our thumbs off if we learn to read?" Sarny asks John. "'Cause to know things, for us to know things, is bad for them. We get to wanting and when we get to wanting it's bad for them. They thinks we want what they got." Authoritarian leaders fear their victims learning to think for themselves; if they logically trace their oppression to these "benevolent" gatekeepers, they'll take back the power they've given them and start working toward their own free, prosperous future. Sarny's "A, B, and C" are the first three links in a chain by which she can pull herself out of slavery and into a world of unlimited opportunity.

Similarly to Gary Paulsen's The Tent, Nightjohn is so spare that I'm not sure it has enough substance to crest the hump between good and great. Waller's violence against his slaves is horrifying without being gratuitously gory, and the message about the value of learning is timeless, but a somewhat longer novel might have been better. I'll rate Nightjohn two and a half stars, and could easily round to three. The story is scary at times for younger kids, but serves as reminder that the only way to escape oppression is to arm yourself with the tools to become independent. That is John's true lesson.