Essay on Orphan Trains

To start off I felt this was a good movie overall. One scene I felt that had stood out was when the black man was showed the pattern on the cloth showing that there was a house he can escape to with his daughter. This scene kind of gave us a hint that many people probably knew about the house but was too scared to escape in fear of being caught. I felt that the black man was very determined to get his daughter away safely no matter what so much that he went in to unknown water just to hide from the slave masters. I was a little confused at the begging because I thought slave work consisted of picking cotton or some other hardship. There was a scene that stood out to me on a personal note. The scene were the black man was hanged and his daughter was watching as this occurred.

Orphan Train is a novel about Molly and Vivian, who spend time together and share their life experiences. Molly is a 17-year-old girl, a Penobscot Indian who is aging out of the foster care system, and her improbable friendship with a 91-year-old woman named Vivian, an Irish immigrant child that rode an orphan train. Vivian is born Niamh, who is renamed Dorothy and renamed name again to Vivian as she is left by herself in New York after her family dies in a fire. She is taken in by Children's Aid Society and sent west on an Orphan Train to find a new home. Molly is put into the foster care system after her dad died in a car accident and her mother turned

Throughout the novel Orphan Train, there is the reoccurring importance of names for characters. Niamh receives a total of three different names in her lifetime, each name representing a different persona. Niamh is naïve and acts her age, Dorothy experiences hardships and is forced to suppress her emotions, Vivian is identified as the Neilson’s child and has a more stable home life. On the other hand, Molly has a significant name to her culture that helps her to relate to her culture with the events she has gone through in her life.

Tragedy struck London in the 1800s in the form of childhood poverty. Children, having started working by age six, grew up quickly or died begging on the streets. The times forced the children to endure cruelty. London poverty in the 1800s was terrible for children because of poverty laws, unfair expectations, and the way adults were treated compared to children.

Do you know how orphans were treated in the past? Probably not, and that’s why the book Orphan Train should be selected by the city of Ottawa Hills as a novel for the residents of all ages and backgrounds to read. Orphan Train is about two women who live similar lives. The one situation that made their lives different, was the time when they were considered orphans. Although not everyone likes the same books, Orphan Train should be selected by the city of Ottawa Hills because it is important to know how children were treated back then vs now.

The children were left at the stop and were chosen or not chosen by people who came to the station to see them. Heredity was a controversial issue in adoption as being race, ethnicity, and religion. Orphan Train Children were eventually adopted, but many were not which means their labor was sold to waiting farmers and were considered to be not much more than slave labor. Even though some children had been abused by their new families, many children got the loving families they had hoped for. The Orphan movement provided many children with homes during a very difficult time.

Contrary to its name, the Orphan Train riders included not only orphans, but also children with only one parent, children that were given up because their family was too big, and runaways. These children often underwent parental death, abandonment, or prostitution. Still other orphans were immigrant children. They suffered from the overpopulation of New York and lack of job availability. Even the jobs they could get did not pay enough for them to survive. Many of the orphans turned to selling small items such as newspapers or matches to survive on the streets. These children often formed gangs to protect themselves from the sometimes violent world of street life in New York City. Police, after finding some of these gangs,

After reading the novel Orphan Train, I watched a documentary called American Experience: The Orphan Trains. It showed a lot of things that I still can’t wrap my head around. I could not even imagine having to ride an orphan train or going through anything like that. It is actually really sad just thinking about what they all had to go through. Reading the book and watching the documentary has led me to a deeper understanding of this experience.

Children were orphaned everyday, and many of the older orphaned children were forced to take care of the younger orphaned. In order for the children to survive, they needed to make themselves useful. Small children would crawl through narrow openings and smuggle food into the ghettos for their friends and families. They did this with great risk, because if they were caught they would be punished severely. Jerry Koenig continues, “The only way you could survive was by supplementing your diet with the things bought through the black market. But you can imagine that if the sellers were risking their lives to obtain these things, then the price is going to be extremely high” (Remembering: Voices of the Holocaust).

The Orphan Trains started in the 1850’s. This story highlights the 1920’s and how the Children’s Aid Society provided aid for orphaned children, which was ever-present as an estimated 30,000 children were homeless in New York city in the 1850’s (Childrensaidsociety.org, n.d.). Molly Ayer and Vivian Daly are the main characters in the book. Molly, a seventeen-year-old girl, is living with foster parents after her father died, and mother turned to drugs and deemed unfit to care for Molly.

(Kahan, 2006) Notice to birthparents was not required, and it is estimated that approximately half the children transported to the west were not actually orphans. (Pfeffer, 2002) Brace was a missionary who wished to remove children of poor Catholic families, and place them in Protestant farming families. (Pfeffer, 2002) The orphan train placements served as a foster care system, without payment to the foster families, and were a cost effective way to manage poor children, in contrast to institutionalizing those who could not live at home. (Kahan, 2006)

When William married 17 year old Orrville native Margaret on October 15, 1917, he was like his dad a railway section man in Falding. Indeed, 3 out of the 5 boys Milo and Eliza had would at some time work for CNR. Clearly dad was useful in getting employment for his sons. After marriage the couple resided in Gordon Bay on Lake Joseph. There they fell so ill of the Spanish Flu that sister Ethel had to temporarily take up residence with them in Mid-June of 1919 to see them through. As William gained experience he moved down the line to Washago as a RR foreman. The son now lived in the first place his father worked in Ontario back in 1881.

The film I would like to discuss is the very first narrative film in history titled, The Great Train Robbery, directed by Edwin S. Porter. I chose this film simply because of how groundbreaking the film was for cinema and I will choose three shots that stood out to me in this film that I feel is worth mentioning. For starters, the first scene I will like to discuss is the scene where the robbers climb aboard the train and have an epic fight with the conductor. This whole sequence is one single shot and probably would be seen as very violent back then. As one of the robbers is fighting the conductor, a small cut is made once he grabs what I believe is a rock to bash his face in, then the robber throws the conductor out of the train into the tracks. This cut allows them to switch the actor with a doll that is suppose to be a sort of fake replica of the actor. This allows the actor to not hold back when trying to bash someones head in with a rock and the audience of that time would witness this scene with much shock because this is the first time anything like this has been seen before. As an audience member witnessing the whole fight, you notice that for the costumes, the robbers are wearing all black throughout the film and the train

In the history of English literature, during Victorian age England had seen development tremendously .It is said that the sun never in England at this time. The richer got richer and the poorer got poorer. Everyday something was invented in London. The population of the city grew rapidly there was less space and more people, the streets got narrower. The upper class of the society discriminated the lower class of the society. The development of London rushed in such a manner that the industries required more workers. In this run of development and industrialization the victims were the kids who lost their childhood. Children are born as orphan are totally identitiless and end up working somewhere for a single meal of a day. Charles Dickens

"Please, sir," replied Oliver, "I want some more." No one will ever forget the simple plea made by the poor hungry little orphan named Oliver Twist. Nobody will be able to omit from his mind the painful blows that Oliver suffered. Nor will anyone cease to recall what it felt like to be young and helpless in a much bigger and stronger world. In an effort to bring the ostracized poverty situation of so many children to the public's attention, Charles Dickens wrote an unforgettable book to touch the hearts of millions. Whether he knew it then or not, he was also bringing a new connotation and worldwide innuendo to the term "child labor".