Set during the Great Depression, Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curits is a award-winning novel about an on-the-run orphan’s quest to find his “real father”. Through an analysis of this text using the Council of Chief State School Officers’ text complexity rubric, I have concluded that this text is easy of students to swallow but difficult to digest (cite the rubric; see Appendix A). By this, I mean that the text itself is not difficult to read or to understand on the surface; however, in order to understand the richness of the text, students must have access to a wide variety of cultural and historical background knowledge of the Great Depression, as well as the ability to decode abstract and figurative language. I came to this conclusion …show more content…
This is primarily due to the fact that the setting of the story takes place during the Great Depression. Without background knowledge and contextualization, students will not be able to fully access many of situations and events (such as Hoovervilles, extreme poverty and emphasis on jazz music and trains) in the story. In order for students to really be able to digest this text, the teacher would need to ensure that students have an understanding of the cultural and economic ramifications of the Great Depression. Students must be able to understand the context of Bud’s situation – he is not simply an orphan. He is an orphan during America’s longest and most devastating period of poverty during a time with vastly different technological and cultural understanding from today. To further push the complexity further, the characters speak using language from the Mid 1930’s. Many of the characters’ words and references (such as John Dillinger, Brer Rabbit and “shucks”; see appendix B and c) will be foreign to many 21st century students. Without support from an instructor or from additional background knowledge, students will be unable to access a significant portion of the information in the text. Finally, the author embeds many instances of figurative and abstract language within the text (see appendix B and C). While not particularly challenging to understand, without a solid conceptual understanding of how to identify and unpack figurative and abstract language, students will be unable to access a significant amount of the text. Because of this text’s complex knowledge demands and unusual vocabulary, although, on the surface, this text is not incredibly difficult to read, teachers should be aware that students’ comprehension of this text will suffer if students are not provided the background
“What those unsuspecting infants could not have realized, of course, was that these were temporary conditions, a false spring to life that would be buffeted by winds of change dangerous and unpredictable, so fierce that they threatened not just America but the very future of the planet.”(p4) Brokaw’s use of imagery here helps the reader understand the drastic nature of the change that occurred in the world between the 1920s and 1940s. He is stating that the youth of our nation was living in a safe-harbor for only a short period of time, almost as if under false pretenses, and that this promising future of America veered radically off a path as they had to face the unprecedented crash of the stock market, with damage so great that over a thousand banks would close, millions of people would become unemployed and homeless, and an overwhelming sense of economic calamity would sweep the feet out from under their fragile vision of security. Brokaw described this in the chapter titled “The Time of their Lives,” as a time when “A mass of homeless and unemployed drifted across the American landscape.” (p7) This gives the reader an image of millions of people hopelessly wandering the country in search for work to survive. The
The book Bud, Not Buddy written by Christopher Paul Curtis is a fictional book with events that occurred during the Great Depression. Bud is a 10-year-old boy who has lost his mother. He has been in and out of foster care. Bud’s last foster parents were mean and abusive so he ran away. He liked to refer to himself as being on the lam.
Detailed Description of Setting: This story takes place in Flint and Grand Rapids, Michigan, during the middle of the Great Depression. The Great Depression was a really bad worldwide economic recession throughout the 1930’s, which caused high unemployment for adults and homelessness for many children. Bud “not Buddy” Caldwell is the main character and is a ten-year-old African-American boy who lives in Flint, Michigan. Bud has been staying in orphanages and several foster homes since his mother died four years earlier when he was six. Bud never knew his father. The few items Bud has left to remember his mother are a bag of rocks, a photograph of his mother as a child and fliers that show Herman E. Calloway and his jazz band, the Dusky Devastators of the Depression. He keeps them in an old suitcase. Bud thinks that Herman Callaway is his father and goes “on the lam” to try to find him. He meets many people and gets into many adventures along the way. Eventually, his journey leads him to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the jazz clubs where Herman and his band play.
When one door closes another opens is the main point of this story. The book Bud not Buddy created by Chrístopher P. Curtis takes place with a 10 year old boy named Bud(not Buddy) who is trying to make a living in the great depression. The great depression was a time between 1926-1939 when nine thousand banks in the USA failed and all that money was destroyed . Most of those banks had bank accounts and people lost lots of money and became broke.
Americans went from having business to unemployment and suffering from poverty, where some had no choice but, to live on the streets. This demonstrates to the readers how difficult it was for Lily and Jim from not going bankrupt and losing their house. Not only, did they worry about losing their jobs, but they also had to worry about feeding their kids seeing that they were too young to attend school or work. Lily did not obtain enough money to spend on things for them such as toys or affording brand new clothing. This demonstrates to the readers how significant this passage is because it affected the decisions Lily made in managing her family in this case, the only way to make extra money was if Lily sold bootleg liquor. Knowing that she desperately needed the money, she was willing to take the risk to prevent her husband to leave the family to find work. In conclusion, Lily and her family were able to make it through The Great Depression, and Jim was even offered a job in managing a ranch to a group of investors in
One in five kids died during the Great Depression. Bud, Not Buddy was based on the Great Depression. There were thousands of orphans. According to Bud, Not Buddy, in the line for the city mission the man might not have been so harsh to Bud if he was white. More people would want to adopt a white child.
This is happening again! I wish that Buds mother wouldn´t like she did in chapter 1 of Bud, Not Buddy, Bud wouldn´t go hungry, and they might´ve been poor/broke. I wish that Buds mother wouldn´t die because, he wouldn´t have had to go out and look for his dad because he was already staying with his mother. Also, he wouldn´t be hungry because he was staying with his mother and he could go to school and eat. If Buds mother would have been poor/broke then they both would be looking for Buds dad. Bud Not Buddy is about a ten year old boy named Bud. His mother died when he was just six years old.
Bud Not Buddy and Red Scarf Girl, are two very deep, provocative stories that describe two different, but in some ways similar living conditions of two different children in different time periods. I noticed that both Bud and Ji Li Jiang have conflicts with society, and themselves. Bud has conflicts with the racist society in which he lives in, in Flint Michigan. After becoming an orphan at age 6, he lives in an orphanage. Later at a harsh family’s home, after feeling fed up and tired of the nonsense that they give him he runs away, only after he is stung repeatedly by hornets and is forced to break out of an old shed. Through his journey to find his father, an elusive figure that he knows only exists through an old flyer from his mother, he
Walter Evan’s depiction of life and the people during the depression of the 1930’s consist of poverty, love, and dedication. In the picture of Bud fields and his family, they almost look poor. That can be depicted by looking at the ratty clothes, them having no shoes and the only small room that’s holding six people while one woman looks pregnant. Because of that said it portrays a depressed expression on the faces along with tired and worn out. While that’s been pointed out, it can be drawn that they value the word family and love and are close together. They all look like something towards helping the family. The value and love that goes towards this family is shown in the picture by the pictures and shelf of nick-knacks on the back wall.
Some characters in this novel are alienated by mainstream society because they do not fit society’s ideal image of a person. And they are all not accepted as human beings. Throughout John Steinbeck’s novel, Of Mice and Men, the social injustice of how people were treated during the Great Depression is explored through the characters Crooks, Curley’s wife, and Lennie, to show that society actually needs to become stronger than it really is.
Like the American population during Great Depression, the characters in the story faced many hardships they had to overcome, including but not limited to those mentioned previously. In brief, the Great Depression was a devastating event in the history of America’s economy and Capitalistic standpoint, that had the potential to abolish the United States’ world power status
Did you know that almost all African Americans were homeless during the Great Depression? Well, they were, and so was Bud Caldwell! Bud Caldwell is a ten-year-old African American boy. He is the main character in the book, Bud, Not Buddy, written by Christopher Paul Curtis. After Bud's mother died when he was six, Bud went to an orphanage. Then, Bud went to a foster family, but the Amoses were very mean to him. So, Bud ran away. Bud started trying to find his father in the hopes that he may not be an orphan anymore, and so that he wouldn't be treated so awful. Bud, Not Buddy would be a different book if it were written in a white person's perspective because white people got things that African Americans didn't, white people thought that they were better than African Americans, Bud would have been treated better, and he would not have been surprised when he found out that the Amoses had hot water running into their house.
“One day there was a blowout so explosive that it sucked four workmen out of the tunnel and blew them through twenty feet of river silt and shot them up threw the river itself forty feet into the air on the crest of a geyser. Only one of the men survived. (13.1)” America had embedded industrialization so deeply at the core of the 1900’s that even though men, women, and children were all dying from the deplorable conditions and experiences it was considered a time of excellence. However this excellence came not only off the back of immigrants, but from a systematic oppression of thousands, including black Americans. Sarah and Coalhouse both suffer the injustices from white men and the mistreatment of those considered to be “less than”. Injustice is a main theme of this book, and nearly every character dies as a cause of it, “A militiaman stepped forward and, with the deadly officiousness of armed men who protect the famous, brought the butt of of his Springfield against Sarah's chest as hard as he
The Great Depression broke down security and belief in American society during the early 20th century and brought out hidden prejudices. The once optimistic mood during the Roaring 20’s turned to pain. The dire economic situation caused Americans to return to past social stigmas where certain groups of people were seen as inferior; as a result, the American Dream, where everyone could seek their ideal of success, was reduced to merely a dream. John Steinbeck observed these changes in social behavior and witnessed the plight of many Americans during the Great Depression. Like in his later work, The Grapes of Wrath, he was inspired by his environment to expose the lives of people during the Great Depression using Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck observed these changes in social behavior and witnessed the plight of many Americans during the Great Depression. Steinbeck demonstrates in Of Mice and Men through the characters that the American Dream was naturally discriminatory towards certain groups of people because of common perceptions held during that period.
‘..Guys like us that work on ranches are the loneliest guys in the world they got no family they don’t belong no place.’ This is what many felt during the ‘great depression’ in the 1930’s. John Steinbeck gives us the sense that many felt lonely ‘they got no family they don’t belong no place. The main theme of this novel is alienation; the three characters, Curley’s wife, candy, and crooks are all alienated, and felt it by another person at some point. They all have dreams... it’s the American dream... but not all dreams come true...