Singing in the Rain (Blog #5)

"It rained...It rained...It rained...Then he thought he was crying. Something was running down his cheeks. He lifted his hands to wipe away the tears and saw dark brown slime. Above him rivulets of mud slid through the boards of the roof. When it came down, he thought, gonna crush me like a tick bug. It happened so quickly he had no time to ponder...The water was above his ankles, flowing over the wooden plank he slept on. And then it wasn't water anymore. The ditch was caving in and mud oozed under and through the bars." (129-130)

In this passage, this is the scene where Paul D is really in a sticky situation. He is in jail in Georgia where jail featured more torture, and stricter rules than most jails have today and Paul D was put in jail for killing his teacher who was attempting to sell him into slavery. They placed him and forty-six other prisoners into these boxes that had metal bars in them and placed them in large ditches in the ground. This form of prison was very intense and if you broke a rule, or simply misspoke, you got shot in the head at point blank. This is part of the foundation of why Paul D learned not to love things that much in this world now because of things like this that are happening to Paul D and his cell mates. Paul D is essentially powerless in this situation until, it starts to rain. Not just rain, it starts to pour and pour all on the prisoners and presents the new issue that the prisoners face. Do they sit in the wet mud as it rises and slowly begins to drown them or, do they scream and yell to get someone's attention to move them. They choose to take it. But the problem isn't them drowning, it is the significance of the rain. Imagine forty-six large hungry, and beaten, and worn out African Americans all chained up together and at their wits end. Now, try to imagine them all covered in mud and dirt and filth from head to toe and now this downpour of rain is cleaning them of this filth. It draws comparisons to Noah's Arc and how God flooded the earth because there was too much sinning and bad things going on. The mud and dirt on the prisoners represented the dirt and overall filth they had to sit in for most of a day. Once the rain washed away all of the bad things the prisoners have done, Paul D was able to escape and make a zombie-like exit. Ultimately, Paul D got help from another white-man-oppressed race which were the Cherokees or Buffalo Men. This is the classic case of one victim helping another victim. In this situation, Paul D and some of the prisoners run into the trail of tears and a pack of Buffalo Men and it is interesting to see how this destroyed Native American culture and people can help out another destroyed group of people oppressed by the same group of people. This event that happened to Paul D and the 45 other prisoners reminds me of a quote I remembered that says "my enemy's enemy is my friend," in other words, the white man's enemy (Cherokees) are African-American people's friends. This passage shows me that no matter how hard people try to put a race down or show dominance, there will always be help somewhere out there in the world that will help.