In “The Son’s Veto”, the story is started off at a charity fair, and Sophy, the main character in the story, is sitting in a wheelchair, with passers by staring at her as they move past. Why do they need to look? Is it abnormal for a person in a wheelchair to come to a charity fair? No, what we are seeing is the attitude of people towards others of a lower class than themselves. The book says “…a boy of 12 or 13 who stood beside her, and the shape of whose hat and jacket implied that he belonged to a well known public school. The immediate bystanders could hear that he had called her ‘mother’.” This show us that the bystanders are surprised to see a woman like that, of a working class, to be the mother of a well made boy like this. A little later Sophy talks to Randolph, her son, and she says “He have been so comfortable these last few hours that I am sure he cannot have missed us” immediately after Randolph exclaims “Has, dear mother, not have!” He speaks with impatient fastidiousness that was almost harsh, and Sophy immediately adopts the correction with no retaliation or resent for him making it, this is showing us that it’s not just society that looks down on her, but her own son! The perception of society towards Sophy is made clear early on the story because of both of these incidents, the passers by staring at her, and her son correcting her grammar.
In “Roll Of Thunder” we see many cases of segregation by colour, segregation is when one group of people separate themselves to better social standards that another group of people. One of the earliest cases we see is that the white pupils from the Jefferson High come past in a school bus, but the Logan children have to walk to school, This is where the segregation of the classes really begins. Just Because the Logan’s are black, they have to walk to school, while the white kids get to go on a bus. Then we hear about Moe Turner, a black boy, who walks for three and a half hours in order to attend school. Although Moe is not developed as a major character in the book, he represents the decent, poor black child who, eager for education, doggedly makes “the trek daily.”. But it is not always the blacks that are segregated from the whites, in one instance the blacks are prejudiced to a white boy named Jeremy Simms, the Logan boys shun him because he is white, but Cassie states “Jeremy never rode the bus, no matter how bad the weather”. Later on in the story Big Ma takes Stacey, Cassie, and TJ with her to Strawberry. They leave at 3:30 in the morning, and when they reach the marketplace, Big Ma must park in an isolated spot because she is black, this is another example of segregation, the whites are keeping the best spots for themselves and giving the rather useless, empty spaces at the back to Big Ma.
In “The Son’s Veto”, the most obvious method of segregation is the class differences, the working class people, middle class, and then finally the higher classes, the Lords and Ladies of the community. As the vicar married Sophy, this would have been social suicide for him, because in the days that the story was written, no-one, especially not higher classes would marry out of there class. So when the vicar marries Sophy, a lot of friends and acquaintances would shun him and he would be an inevitable source of gossip and talk. I think this is segregation in a way, because people are prejudging them because of the people they have married or are friends with. This shows us that even people who previously were them friends before, were quite simply so snobbish that they don’t speak to them anymore just because of someone that you married. One of the only people who speaks to Sophy, and he speaks to her as if she is of a higher class than him, whether it’s because he feels he has to, because he thinks she is now of a higher class than her, or quite simply because he still likes her. But this is not developed far enough for us to look into it.
The classes are kept apart in “Roll Of Thunder” at quite a few points. One of the main ones being when Cassie, T.J, Stacey and Big Ma go to Strawberry for the market, but T.J convinces Cassie and Stacey to go into ‘Barnett’s Mercantile’, a white shop, with him. When they are in there and T.J is waiting for his groceries, a white woman comes along. Cassie gets quite distressed about this and wonders what’s going on, but T.J is waiting there patiently, because he knows what to expect. As they are still waiting, a young white girl comes along and Mr Barnett (the shopkeeper) serves her first. Cassie is even more distraught, getting quite hotheaded and impulsive she “tugs on his shirt sleeve” and she asks Mr Barnett why he is serving that white girl before them, when they had been waiting there for nearly an hour. Barnett gets very angry with this and he shrieks “nigger”, then Stacey gets Cassie outside the shop as quick as possible. The most prominent factor of races being kept apart is the schools, the white kids have the school buses, the good quality equipment, and the more qualified teachers. While the black kids have no school bus, and the only time they would even get schoolbooks was when the books weren’t in a good enough condition for whites anymore, they were just hand downs. Another separation point are jobs, white people get easier jobs like working in shops etc., but blacks do all the back breaking work, like working on the railroad as Papa Logan does.
In “The Son’s Veto” there are not many instances where we directly see class separation, but the main time when we do is at the cricket match. All the higher classes get the best places, but the lower classes get a few smaller spots, and, even though Sophy is Randolph’s mother, she still has to stay in the lower class ‘area’. This show us that classes were so important back then that it even came before family.
The whites in “Roll Of Thunder” address the blacks very differently to how they would address each other. When Mr Granger and Kaleb Wallace come in to the school were Mama Logan works, he interrupts her lesson and without making any apology at all he just starts talking to her and questions her teaching, but the key factor in this is that he calls her Mary. If she was to speak to him, she would have to say Mr Wallace or Mr Granger, but they don’t talk to her like that because they feel that they don’t have to because she isn’t as good as them. Another example is when Mr Granger comes to the Logan’s house to talk about the land, he speaks to David Logan, but while they are speaking, David is addressing him as Mr Granger, but Harlan Granger is calling him (papa) David. When we meet Mr Jamison for the first time, we notice that when the Logan’s are talking to him, they address him ass Mr Jamison, and he addresses them as Mr Logan, Mrs Logan etc. This is because Mr Jamison is not a racist and he does not believe you should discriminate someone just because of his or her skin colour.
Since “The Son’s Veto” is a story about class prejudice, there are many occurrences of different ways in which people address others. In the beginning of the story, Sam and Sophy are talking to each other, and they are simply using each other’s Christian names, just as good friends would. And when Sophy goes upstairs to talk to the vicar a little later, she calls him “sir”. This is a direct point that shows us the different ways of talking to other classes. Within there own class they talk the same but to someone in a highly class than them they must address them properly, with ‘sir’ or ‘madam’. Soon after, the vicar speaks to Sophy and says, “No, Sophy, lame or not lame, I cannot let you go.” He calls her Sophy, so he obviously believes that she is of a lower social class than him. Later on in the story, when the vicar has died and Sophy is left a widow, she sees Sam again, but this time something’s different, he talks to her and he says, “well, Mrs Twycott, I knew you lived along here somewhere.” Sam now addresses her as Mrs Twycott, because he now thinks that she is of a higher class than him, because she married to a vicar.
In “Roll of thunder” the prejudice against the blacks is very extreme, all sorts of things happen. Some of them are quite simple, such as the black kids being ignored in Barnett’s mercantile, to the burning of the Berry’s. The whites try to find any excuse they can to do things to the blacks, when they burned the berry’s house down, it was just because someone overheard there son saying something about a girl, and he got killed for it. I don’t think there would be very many people who would agree to that.
In “The son’s veto”, the class prejudice is not that of a violent nature, but it’s of an emotional nature, and although there are no physical incidents in the book, the suffering would still hurt. Having people tell you what to do and what you should be like, being forced to have the bottom end of everything, the leftovers from the higher classes. And as I said before, it even happens in family.
In “Roll of thunder”, all the white people, but a few, are racist. We also see that all the blacks in the stories are innocent. None of them seem to do any wrong. This however, is very far from the truth. People who read this book, who may not know about the history of prejudice to blacks, will gain a false perception of what life was like in their times. Granted, the incidents in the book probably did happen but the perfect blacks and the evil whites, it’s just not a good way of showing what life was like. Mildred Taylor should have shown more of the good side of the whites, and more of the bad sides of the blacks, I feel that the book is biased towards blacks, maybe to produce more of a shock factor to what time was like in the southern states of America of 1933, or maybe because the writer was black.
In “The Son’s Veto”, I think that Hardy give the impression that Sophy doesn’t really have any close friends or relatives who she can go and see or talk to, also we get the feeling that Randalph is quite a horrible person. Even though Sophy is the mother, he sill looks down on her and corrects her with things that she says or does. He quite simply embarrasses he. She makes no effort to talk to him about it or act upon it, because she accepts that he is of a higher social class than her, we feel a lot of sympathy for Sophy, she is perhaps, one of the most felt for characters in the story.
In “Roll Of Thunder”, the language is a mix of standard English and Southern states of America dialect. Here they have words like “y’all” and “gonna”. There is a lot of slang in this book, with most of the letters of the letters off the end of the words missed out, such as when T.J says “like my grandfather looked jus’ ‘fore they buried him.” The language is quite difficult to understand because of all the abbreviations, but when the narrator, Cassie, speaks, it is very easy to understand because she doesn’t use the slang. I think that this is maybe to make the reader feel more comfortable reading the book, so they don’t become too overwhelmed with the language.
This is very different to “The Son’s Veto”, as this is full of “posh”, late 19th century English. Words such as “fastidiousness”, which means pickiness, and “reverie” meaning daydream. This makes the story a lot harder to understand because of the complicated grammar. But there are characters in the story that are easier to understand, yet still not quite correct. When Sam speaks to Sophy, he says “I have often looked out for ‘ee.” Just as in “Roll”, there are abbreviations and slang. So there are some similarities, but the words in “The Son’s Veto” are much more difficult to read because of the formal grammar. I think the author has done this because the fashion of words at the time, was words like this, especially among the higher social classes.
I think that in “Roll of thunder”, there are no successful changes between race groups. The only person who has been accepted as a friend of the blacks is Mr. Jamison. Jeremy Simms may have been one as well but David Logan says to him “Right now you and Jeremy might get along fine, but in a few years he’ll think of himself as a man but you’ll still be a boy to him, and if he feels that way, he’ll turn on you in a minute.” So Papa Logan is in a way being prejudiced himself, using the stereotype of white people against Jeremy, who is a good person.
I think in relation to attitudes today, “Roll Of Thunder”, is quite a powerful story, because there is still racism around. It is not as much of an issue today as it was back then, but it’s still here. I feel that it always will be here. No matter how much people try, there will always be some who are this shallow.
In “The Son’s Veto”, there are no successful class changes. I think that this is because of the snobbery related to the higher classes. That even though Sophy married someone in a high class, she still wasn’t allowed in.
I think that class segregation is much less of a problem than it was back then, there is still some sort of mild, class order in today’s society, most probably between the super-rich, and the rest of us. I don’t think there would be many people at all who would want class segregation back, and if they did, chances are they’d probably be Lord or Lady someone. Maybe there’s still a snob factor among the higher than us.
By Ross McFadyen
