Roots

Kevin Garcia

Period 2

5/18/06

Roots

The story of roots starts in Africa during the 1700's. Kunta Kinte, an African youth, is going through his manhood training to be a man. I don't know how well that will work in our time. He is taught many lessons, Fights a wrestler, and performs other religious rituals. One task was for him to go out and catch a bird without killing it. Something I wouldn't be able to do. During his search he sees white people and runs back to camp. He tells the tribe leader and everyone is warned about the white people who put you on a boat to a far away land. When his Manhood training is over he returns to his village. He gets his own hut and doesn't have to live with his parents anymore. That would be cool to have nowadays. So anyway he decides to go out into the woods to fetch some wood to make a drum for his little brother. While he is searching for the wood he is captured by Americans who traveled all the way from Annapolis, Maryland in America. I wouldn't have gone through all that trouble for my little brother. They captured some more Africans and put them on a boat to America. Once in America, At a slave auction, Kunta is bought for $850 by John Reynolds of Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Given the name "Toby" and assigned to work as a field laborer on Massa Waller's plantation, Kunta proceeds to escape four times over the next four years and is punished, each time more severely. See Kunta Kinte is too brave for his own good I wouldn't try to escape four times. maybe once is OK. Unlike the American-born Blacks on the plantation, who have not been taught to read or write and are treated more like children than adults, Kunta can read, write, and speak fluent Arabic, and is angered by his forced enslavement. I'd be angry too. On his fourth escape attempt, slave catchers chop off half of Kunta's right foot so that he cannot escape anymore. Good for him he had it coming. Incensed by the attack, John Reynolds' brother, Dr. William Reynolds, buys Kunta from his brother and allows him to be nursed back to health by his "big house" cook, Bell. A warmhearted, American-born slave, Bell patiently nurtures a relationship with the tall, brooding African at the same time. Kunta works for seven years as Dr. Reynolds' gardener before he finally plucks up the courage to ask Bell to marry him. Took him long enough. She does, and the two have a baby at a rather advanced age. Kunta insists that the child be named Kizzy, an African name, rather than Mary, the name Bell would have preferred. Kizzy which in African means "Stay Put" meaning that neither Kunta nor Kizzy Would ever leave bell. At the age of six, Kizzy becomes good friends with Dr. Reynolds' daughter, Missy -- to her parents' dismay. This is weird how Missy and Kizzy could get along.As time goes on, Kizzy grows less close to her parents and more attached to Missy, who treats her as her personal plaything. Through Missy, Kizzy also learns how to read. This proves to be her undoing, for ten years later, Kizzy falls in love with a male slave from the plantation. When she confides to him that she knows how to read and write, he implores her to forge papers for him so he can escape, and she does. The following day, soldiers who have caught, tortured and killed the runaway slave come to Dr. Reynolds' plantation and wrench Kizzy away from her parents. She is dragged away to a slave auction, never to see her parents again. Kizzy is auctioned off to a disreputable slave owner in North Carolina named Tom Moore. That is just wrong I would not want to be taken away from everything I know to be auctioned off. On Kizzy's first night at his plantation, her drunken master makes crude sexual advances to her. When she refuses to have sex with him, he brutally rapes her in the barn and then drops a quarter in a jar next to her bed as thanks for her services. He continues to abuse her several times a week, leaving her a coin each time, until she is five months pregnant. That guy is lucky that he wasn't living in our time or he would be in jail. She gives birth to a son whom her master insists on giving a European name, not an African one. The baby is named George. More time passes and George Moore is Tom Moore's chicken trainer. He finds out that tom Moore is his dad and raped his mom Kizzy. George intends to kill him but his mother Kizzy convinces