Jack Jenkins Essays - Chains, Historical Fiction, Slavery, Injustice

Jack Jenkins Mrs. Collister English 10 25 August 2015 Chains by: Laurie Halse Anderson The story started off at the funeral of Ruth and Isabel's owner, Mary Finch. Due to Ms. Finch passing away, her brother takes ownership over Ruth and Isabel and sells them to a rich couple of merchants from Britain named Anne and Elihu Lockton. The Lockton's are very mean and stubborn. Anne Lockton is very strict and demands Ruth and Isabel to call her Madam. Ruth and Isabel are treated very badly when they are working for the Lockton's. Isabel meets a boy on the ship named Curzon, but he is a Patriot. At this time America is fighting for independence from Britain. Isabel now tries to help the Bellingham's by spilling secrets that she overheard the Lockton's talking about, so this can help the Bellingham's gain freedom. Isabel now is trying to escape, so she is trying every trick she can think of to leave the Lockton's. Isabel ends up sneaking Curzon out of a prison cell and they both row out of New York to Jersey. They finally freed themselves from slavery. Reading this book, I learned that the main characters of this book were treated as if they weren't even humans and they were not cared for by anyone. They were taught to work and receive nothing back. That was there culture, and that's how they lived. Isabel and Ruth's owner that cared for them died, so they had to get sold to an even worse situation with the Lockton's. Mary Finch, Ruth and Isabel's original owner, planned on freeing them from slavery. The culture back in this time period involved using slaves as a way from maintaining their property. Also, the point of the war that was going on was to gain freedom for their country, but the slaves wouldn't gain freedom with them. This differs from culture today because slavery is illegal and now you have the same freedom as anybody else regardless of skin color, race, family, or money. Slaves were almost not even considered as humans back in the time period of Chains . Now in America, everybody is equal and embraced equally. My favorite character of this story was definitely Isabel because she was very emotionally strong and she was also very cunning. Isabel stayed strong regardless of how badly she was treated. She was a team player and she did everything in her power to find a way out of slavery, and she did. She was so smart to disguise herself as a cell cleaner that she was able to take Curzon with her to leave New York and free them from slavery. She had a plan and she sought out everything she was going to do before she even did it. I would recommend this boom to next year's sophomores only because I am not a great reader and I truly dislike reading, but this book was very interesting and I really enjoyed reading it. This story had a great description of how life was for the slaves. If you wait for the story to get started, you will definitely like this book.