Cassie’s inability to understand the treatment of blacks, and how the black people responded, is pushed even further as the day in Strawberry continues. As Cassie, T.J. and Stacey leave, she bumps into Lillian Jean Simms, a white girl around Cassie’s age, who demands an apology (113). When Mr. Simms comes, he pushes Cassie off of the sidewalk when she attempts to turn away (114). When Big Ma appears, Cassie is trying to get away from the Simms family. However, Mr. Simms demands an apology and Big Ma, reluctantly, tells Cassie to do as he says. The chapter ends with Cassie’s thought: “No day in all my life had ever been as cruel as this one,” (116). Barker concludes:
Such initiation scenes, common in the Logan family saga, awaken the child …show more content…
Cassie is no longer the same innocent 9-year old girl that she was at the beginning of the text. She has experienced direct racism and has had her perceptions of the world shattered and reconfigured into a more perverse image. Cassie’s parents could have shielded her from the truth and kept her innocence in tact. Rather, the Logans made the choice to sit down with Cassie and explain why these terrible things were happening, and how she is a part of it; a choice to remove her innocence in favor of protecting their daughter. While there are other instances that contribute to the loss of Cassie’s innocence that could be explored, these incidents have the most prominent effect, because trusted adults provide information within context. Now, she must remain cognizant of the way she acts and interacts with the white people around her, and instead she must use her newfound agency to help herself, and help those around her, as Sarah Hardstaff says in “Papa Said that One Day I Would Understand’: Examining Child Agency and Character Development in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry Using Critical Corpus Linguistics,” (2014): “The novel has also been cited as a powerful exploration of child agency, that is to say, the capacity of children ot change the world around them and challenge injustices”
Such initiation scenes, common in the Logan family saga, awaken the child …show more content…
Cassie is no longer the same innocent 9-year old girl that she was at the beginning of the text. She has experienced direct racism and has had her perceptions of the world shattered and reconfigured into a more perverse image. Cassie’s parents could have shielded her from the truth and kept her innocence in tact. Rather, the Logans made the choice to sit down with Cassie and explain why these terrible things were happening, and how she is a part of it; a choice to remove her innocence in favor of protecting their daughter. While there are other instances that contribute to the loss of Cassie’s innocence that could be explored, these incidents have the most prominent effect, because trusted adults provide information within context. Now, she must remain cognizant of the way she acts and interacts with the white people around her, and instead she must use her newfound agency to help herself, and help those around her, as Sarah Hardstaff says in “Papa Said that One Day I Would Understand’: Examining Child Agency and Character Development in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry Using Critical Corpus Linguistics,” (2014): “The novel has also been cited as a powerful exploration of child agency, that is to say, the capacity of children ot change the world around them and challenge injustices”