Chapter 12- The Water is Wide

“Of the Yamacraw children I can say little. I don’t think I changed the quality if their lives significantly or altered the inexorable fact that they were imprisoned by the very circumstance of their birth. I felt much beauty in my year with them. It hurt very badly to leave them. For them I leave a single prayer: that the river is good to them in the crossing.” I know that this is a long quote, but this paragraph kept sticking out to me. This shows hoe Conroy felt about the children and how hurt he was by having to leave them. With that, he also wishes them the best.

In chapter 12, Conroy begins by telling how hurt and angry he was for having to leave the island. He stated that in that year on sadness, he wrote this book to reflect on how the situation affected him and his life.  It is easy to tell that Conroy was angry because he had to leave the island. He stated that Piedmont and Bennington were evil in his eyes. As time went on, Conroy finally started coming out of the sadness and anger so that he could come to “truce” about himself and the people of Yamacraw.

In the middle of Chapter 12, Conroy talked about Mrs. Brown. He stated that the only reason she acted the way that she did is because he was “victimized by her own insecurity.” Conroy said that Mrs. Brown learned to hate him just because he would not agree with how she felt about the people on the island.

In all, Conroy shows how much he actually cares for his students and gives them experiences that they would have never seen. He treats them as if they are human beings, and he truly wants the best for them in life.

Chapter Eleven- The Water is Wide

“But the victory, if one could call it that, was ephemeral and elusive, a brief and strident shout atop a mountain that was more noise than substance, more smoke than flames. Piedmont and I had locked horns in a furious encounter, separated by an insurmountable gap of thirty years.” This phrase, in my opinion, has a big meaning in chapter eleven. Conroy was in the school board meeting and overpowered Dr. Piedmont by telling his case and story of the island. He states how these children lived and how illiterate they were. This is a victory for Conroy because other people are being told about the education on the island.

At the beginning of chapter eleven, graduation was taking place on the island. There was two boys and two girls who graduated. Graduation took place under the oak tree in the school yard. During graduation, Conroy spoke. He presented Zeke a book called, “The Family of Man.” This was to show respect for all of the dedication that Zeke had given to Conroy and the children over the school year.

When summer began, Conroy took seven children to a summer camp to teach them to swim. The camp was donated by the northern priest. None of the children knew how to swim, so Conroy wanted to make that a priority on his list. The children are deathly afraid of water because of all of the family members the children had lost over the years due to the river.

Towards the middle of the chapter, Conroy meets with Dr. Piedmont and he is furious. Piedmont is mad at Conroy because he charged the gas money of the commute to the island to the school. This becomes a big argument that ends up being taken to the school board. At the school board meeting, all of Conroy friends came to support him. When Piedmont begin to talk about the schools, Conroy butted in about Yamacraw. He told the board the severity of the children and how illiterate they were. He continued to tell them how they do not receive an adequate education like the children on the mainland do.

In conclusion, Conroy started planning for another year. He was planning several trips for the students, but money was the main issue. This chapter really shows the determination that Conroy has to help his students.

Chapter Ten- The Water is Wide

“Always we turned outward to where they would drift when they left Yamacraw, to the world of lights and easy people, to the dark cities that would devour their innocence and harden their dreams.”  I chose this sentence because the children would ask Conroy what New York was like. These children would fantasize and live through his stories. The children would think it was this great place but, in reality, this place would take them for granted and let them down.

At the beginning of chapter ten, Conroy was getting frustrated with the children and the pace of their learning. In my opinion, Conroy had never had a class on this level and he did not realize the time that it would take. He wanted so much for these children, but they were too far gone for them to be where Conroy wanted them to be.

On in the chapter, Conroy makes an announcement to the class that they would be going to Washington D.C. However, we all knew how Mrs. Brown would react. Of course she said this trip was unnecessary and that the children should be spending their time doing “reading’, writin’, and ‘rithmetic. Conroy continued to explain that flying the children was out of the question because they would be too scared to fly. Busing seemed to be the next best thing, but it ended up being too expensive. The route that they ended up taking was by automobile.

The class left on the first Monday in May. When they arrived in Washington D.C., the children really enjoyed the statue of Lincoln. This is because he “freed the colored folk and did the Mancey Pation Decoration.” This sentence made me laugh and broke my heart all in the same one because it showed how illiterate these children were, but they respected the people who helped them.

Chapters Six- Nine- The Water is Wide

“The boat ride to Yamacraw became a celebration of sorts. It was a time when I became aware of tides ebbing and flooding in accordance with the transcendental clockwork; a time of the pale, wafer-thin moon the early morning sky and of the last star to vanish with the coming of the sun over the green waters.” In this part of the book it talks about Conroy’s ride over to Yamacraw. He left the island to live with his family and he seems to be happier in this part of the book. These sentences explain what Conroy saw in the morning on his trip to Yamacraw.

A big part of chapter six were the students getting ready for their trip to Beaufort for Halloween. The parents told them that they could not go at first because they were scared that the river would take them like it had other family members. The children got to interact with other children that lived normal lives at the school. One of the children fell and hurt her knee, so Conroy had to take her to the doctor to get it stitched up. The children of Yamacraw stayed with families who had volunteered to keep them and take the trick-or-treating. The children had a great experience and a lot of fun.

In the book, it told about how to obtain a bus license. The only thing that the person had to do was to have reached puberty and be able to recite the alphabet to be able to drive a bus. The children of the island hated Mrs. Brown. She made them feel as if they were nothing. She would carry two “straps” around and beat the children as discipline if they did not listen. She also embarrassed one of the students for peeing the bed and belittled them. In chapter nine, Conroy’s friends wanted to visit Yamacraw. He would bring them back and forth to the island. He explained to the children of his classroom that the people wanted to come to the island to learn about their culture and how they lived. When the friends of Conroy would actually come over, they would teach the children different things. Conroy’s friend Dick taught the class about Boston and the Revolutionary War.

Chapter 5- The Water is Wide

“On the reconnaissance foray into the bowels of the great closet that harbored the jetsam and flotsam washed into the schoolroom over the years, I unearthed a brand-new automatic movie projector.” This is the first sentence in chapter five, and it made me want to go get a dictionary. It took me several times rereading it to realize that Conroy found an automatic movie projector in the closet. In the beginning of chapter five it talks about how Mrs. Brown tried to sabotage the film program. She felt as if Conroy was wasting valuable time. I disagree with Mrs. Brown because as illiterate as these children were, exposure to anything would have helped them.

It surprised me that the children had seen The Wizard of Oz. They knew what had happened in the movie, and they were able to recite different parts of the movie. It states in the book that the children had seen it on television. It also says that they get parts of The Wizard of Oz with an episode of Bonanza.

Two white men also came on the island in chapter five. They were students from California and attended Cowell College. The two men were there to do a study about the people on the island. They were to communicate and live with in the island culture. The men were also supposed to communicate with the islanders and help them with whatever they may need. This was supposed to give the men the experience of life on Yamacraw.

What Mrs. Brown said on page 124 really threw me for a surprise. The real reason she did not want the two white men to help out in the school were because they were white. She did not want the white boys and colored girl to “bump too many elbows.” Mrs. Brown did not want them to have too much contact because she was scared that they would make “half-breed cows.” It shows the amount of racism that was actually on the island.

Conroy seen one of the students break the legs off of a frog to watch it suffer. He ended up giving the class a lecture on treating their animals better. He told them that their animals should be full if life instead of miserable. Zeke’s dog was having a litter of puppies, so Conroy told the students if they would treat them right they could receive a puppy. That day Conroy released seven of the puppies to new homes. When Conroy went to check on one several months later, the dog came out and bit Conroy on the boot.