The Good Lord Bird Composition - Essay Example

The Good Lord Bird The Good Lord Bird is a book based on the actual life lived of John Brown, an anti-slavery activist. Written by a musician and author, McBride John, the story revolves in the period of mid-19th century where slavery existed. The narrator of the story is a young boy named Onion. Our first encounter with Onion is when he was 12 years of age and taken in by James Brown and mistake to be a slave girl. Onion is introduced into the anti-slavery mission occustrated by James Brown with the hope that one day all black slaves will be freed from the white oppressors (McBride 8). Living as a girl though was tough for Onion; she managed to keep it a secret. The story ends in in a sad note when James Brown and his comrades are killed in one of their missions, and Onion is the only one who escapes and goes to freedom land. Anyway, in the story, McBride depicts the various characters in a special way. The common way which he used to differentiate different characters was by the use of different dialects. Take for instance Onion whom he had a unique dialect (McBride 11). Another person who had a dialect was Harriet Tubman and usually refers to the Bible in her talk. She is seen to speak with a different cadence plus rhythm entirely. In this essay, the roles of speech, dialect and elocution will be examined in relation to the characters in the story. Onion in the story is seen to have a dialect while speaking. The very purpose of the author giving Onion a dialect is to commensurate his role as a non-educated boy of African-American descent. Onion speaks in a way which the blacks are able to directly associate with. In the story, MacBride manages to create a voice for Onion that sounded more or less like a less-educated dialect. It is by the use of dialect that MacBride is able to capture the attention of the reader by trying to make them associate and relate directly to the boy in the story. Living his whole life as a slave at a white man’s farm, Onion did not get any form of education (McBride 29). Therefore, when James Brown rescued him from the previous Slave owner, Onion spoke with a dialect. Onion says in the book, “He sprinkled most of his conversation with Bible talk, thees and thous and takest and so forth. He mangled the Bible more than any man I every knowed... but with a bigger purpose, cause he knowed more words" (McBride 14). Onion said these to refer to how he viewed the old man. Speaking in a dialect, Onion was directly referring to the old man’s nature of constantly relying on the bible verses to justify his course. It is because of the very dialect that Onion is mistakenly identified as a girl and taken in by James Brown to help with his antislavery campaigns. The old man believed that Onion was a good luck charm for his course and treated her well. In addition, the dialect in some sense was supposed to bring out the element of humor posed by the character (McBride 17). Throughout the story, Onion manages to pass on like a girl, whereas he was a boy. It is even surprising that even members of the household thought her to be a girl and even got some admirers. Dialect in a sense helped to bring out the innocence nature of Onion in the story. Onion had been naïve about slavery abolitionists until he met James Brown. After bring taken into the household of Brown, Onion narrates the story from a first person perspective into the life of a person whom many referred to as a historic hero (McBride 34). It is by the very innocence she had and lack of not following Brown into the war that she manages to escape and go to a land where blacks were free. Therefore, dialect was meant to represent her purity, untouched by any, just the way he was brought up. Another character whom is depicted in the story as having a unique dialect is the old man. At his age, one would expect him to be rigid in his thinking (McBride 22). That is why MacBride presents him with an African-American dialect that seems strong and authoritative. Anyone who meets the old man adores his thinking of freeing the black people from slavery, and admires his talk. That is the reason why he manages to convince others to follow his course in the liberation of other slaves. In meeting with the character Frederick Douglass in the story, he is depicted as an abolitionist who made speeches and spoke with eloquence. On visiting Frederick household on one occasion, Onion managed to extrude the characters of Frederick. He realizes that Frederick seems to be an educated person and speaks fluently (McBride 53). Unlike in contrast, the old man who spoke with an African-American dialect while constantly quoting from the bible. The use of speech and eloguecy to describe Frederick Douglass, depict the kind of admiration the author had for such a man. He depicted Frederick as a strategists and a man who reasoned before acting on a given thing (McBride 55). Though in as much as the old man had visited Frederick Douglass I several occasions to convince him about his course, not at one point do we see him collude with him. In fact, the author refers to Frederick as a true abolitionist’s and refutes the old man as an abolitionist. Dialect in this sense was used to show the level of education plus to bring the readers to term about the character of Frederick and the influence of education on his life. It is at such moments that the reasoning of an uneducated African- American man and an educated man can be seen (McBride 56). Anyway, in the end, Frederick did not choose the path taken by the old man and hence did not end up killed like the old man’s followers. In conclusion, McBride manages to bring out the characters of his story through the use of dialects, speech and elocution. In the story, he uses a character named Onion, who was a young boy and gives him an uneducated dialect (McBride 23). In addition, he gives James brown an African-American and authoritative dialect that explains his course of action. Furthermore, in meeting with Frederick Douglass, he is given an eloquent dialect presenting him as an educated person. All in all, dialect, speech and eloquence did matter in bringing out some of the characteristics of the characters. Works Cited McBride, James. The Good Lord Bird. New York: John & Wiley Sons, 2013. Read More