Nightjohn Film Analysis

The movie Nightjohn is a prime educational movie about slavery in the antebellum south. In Nightjohn, a young curious girl named Sarny just turns old enough to start work. She was raised by another slave named Delie as her mother was sold when she was a small child. Sarny starts working at the same house under the same master that Delie works under. Her job is mainly to take care of their young son named Homer. One night, while everyone is sleeping, Sarny notices a man (Nightjohn) awake sitting on the floor. She starts talking to him he asks her for tobacco, she said she will give it to him. He agrees and starts by teaching her the letter “A”. Once Sarny knows what “A” is, she gets very excited and starts reading all the “A’s” in the letters Misses is giving her to deliver to the doctor. When Delie finds out that John has been teaching Sarny to read, she becomes furious and demands him to stop. She asks if that's why he has all …show more content…
I can definitely say it would not be a movie I could catch myself watching in my downtime, but I’m glad I got to see it. In school I have always learned about slavery and what happened to slaves but never got a very clear picture on what really happened and how slaves in the south were really treated. This movie really showed me everything I was ever wondering and as far as I know it’s pretty historically accurate. Nightjohn taught me a lot about slaves, such as they needed passes to go anywhere other than where they were working, and that some of the masters were actually kind to the slaves and only abused them and treated them awfully when they messed up. For some reason I always had this image in my head of slaves being literally chained up and treated so much worse than they actually were, this movie really changed that image in my head. Overall, this is a very great movie in teaching about slavery in the antebellum south, also just an entertaining movie with a good story line that I really