Social Injustice In Sarah's Key

Often times people act a certain way and are afraid to be themselves because they are scared of what others will think of them. If you don’t love and accept yourself, you will never achieve happiness in your life. Social injustice can cause people to be ashamed of who they are. It takes a lot of courage and strength to not let social injustice define you. In the young adult fiction novel, If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson and in the historic drama, Sarah’s Key by Tatiana De Rosnay, characters show that social injustice does not define who they are and their true self is still able to shine through. In the beginning of If You Come Softly, Miah first experiences social injustice when he is a young boy. Even though he is so young, he …show more content…
Miah and his best friends have a special connection, “On their first day of practice, Rayshon had leaned over and whispered, ‘Just call us the three black musketeers.’ Jeremiah had smiled and nodded. It was a joke, but there was something deeper to it too” (Woodson 60). The jokes they make about being different from the other kids reflects how they view themselves. These kids were joking but they were also acknowledging how they are treated differently and are going to have to stick together. Miah begins to notice how people have the wrong impression about black neighborhoods. They believe that it is a poor area where only bad things happen. Miah and the other kids who live there know that this is not the truth. They are all like brothers and when they are together they forget about everything else. They just play basketball and have fun. They all support each other and are like family. Some people disrespect their home because they think blacks are poor and different. On Miah’s basketball team a kid named Peter tries to act like he is black to make fun of Miah and his home, ‘“You come around my way, we could get a nice game on,’ Peter said smiling. ‘They got fly courts over by me.’ Jeremiah turned, feeling evil suddenly. ‘Why don’t you come …show more content…
The social injustice that she faces as a child confuses her and makes her embarrassed to be Jewish. When Sarah was about 12 years old she had to start wearing stars on her clothes to show she was Jewish. She did not understand why and just wanted to be treated like a normal kid. People started to treat her differently because of her star. There were two other kids in her class who had to wear stars just like she did. Sarah and the other kids with stars were treated poorly by their other classmates. As Sarah looked back on her childhood, “She remembered the first day she’d worn her star to school… from that day forward, most girls stopped speaking to the children with the stars. Or worse still, stared at them with disdain” (Rosney 47). The star Sarah had to wear made others view her differently and Sarah had to overcome the fact that this star would change her life. She later realizes that these social injustices do not define the person that she is. She is still human and is worthy of being respected. Just because she is Jewish does not mean she is less than other people. Sarah becomes frustrated with the social injustices that she is facing and begins to resent her heritage. The star continues to affect Sarah’s life and she hates it. People stop talking to her and now they just stare at her. Her mother told her to stay strong and be herself. Sarah did not understand why people judged others