29 pages • 58 minutes read
Gary PaulsenNightjohn
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
12-year-old Sarny, the narrator, reflects on how Nightjohn came to the plantation where she is a slave. Some people say she summoned him with “witchin” (14), but this isn’t the case.
Sarny’s biological mother no longer lives at the plantation; she was sold by the slave overseer and plantation owner, Clel Waller. Waller is a cruel master whom Sarny both hates and fears. Sarny was raised by Mammy, also known as Delie. Mammy raises all the slave children as their birth mothers, or “breeders,” must return to work after giving birth. She keeps track of the children’s ages by marking notches in a stick for each year that passes. Sarny’s stick has 12 notches, but she cannot count them herself as she never learned numbers. Once girls reach puberty, they become breeders. Though the girls are still children, they help Mammy cook, clean the slave quarters, and watch the other children. Sarny is quiet and learns by listening and observing. At night, she reflects on the things she learned during the day and adds them to what she learned on previous days. She also wonders about her birth mother—what she looked and sounded like. It was on such an occasion of reflection that Sarny first heard about Nightjohn.
Chapter 2 Summary
One of Sarny’s chores is tending to roses, which involves chewing tobacco leaves and spitting on the roses’ leaves to kill pests. While doing this job one day, Sarny hears the “missus”—Waller’s wife—and her sister talk about Waller spending too much money on slaves (21). All Sarny knows about money is what a penny looks like, as she found one once. Mammy told her to hide the penny, which she did, and she sometimes looks at it when no one is around. When Sarny hears the women discuss a slave who cost $1,000, all she knows is that it’s a larger amount than a penny.
In addition to being prohibited from keeping money, the slaves cannot pray or talk about God. However, Mammy prays aloud at night when no one can hear, choosing to talk into a large cast iron kettle. She prays for freedom, but Sarny does not understand what the word means. Sarny only knows that her master is “richer than God” and is spending a lot of money on a new slave: Nightjohn (24).
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
Sarny narrates Nightjohn from a first-person perspective in the past tense, suggesting that she is looking back on previous events from her twelfth year. Gary Paulsen’s choice to tell the story from Sarny’s perspective helps position it as a young adult novel, despite its disturbing content regarding the treatment of African Americans. Furthermore, this choice helps establish one of the novel’s themes, Education as a Means of Freedom. Sarny’s position as the narrator suggests that she is successful in learning to read and write and able to write her own story.
Sarny stands out from the other slaves. People speculate that she might be a witch because of her unusual birthing position and quiet nature. However, Sarny confides that she has no supernatural abilities. She is an observer, a learner. Although she is cut off from education and isn’t even allowed to learn numbers, she has a thirst for knowledge. Sarny shows this part of her nature when she describes her nightly practice of reflecting on what she learned during the day.
Paulsen’s exposition provides insight on the slaves’ mental and emotional restrictions. Any skill or concept that could provide slaves with hope for a better life is prohibited. As a slave, Sarny is completely cut off from education. Alongside the other slaves, she is forbidden to count, read, write, handle money, pray, and talk about freedom. Paulsen shows that enforcing such restrictions was a strategy that slave owners used to keep slaves submissive.
Paulsen also introduces another of the novel’s themes in Chapters 1-2: The Dehumanizing Cruelty of Slavery. One of the roles that female slaves fulfill is birthing the next generation of slaves. The use of the term “breeders” reduces the mother-child relationship among slaves to a purely transactional one. Birth mothers are separated from their children, and these children are raised by one woman to promote efficiency. With Mammy’s role, Paulsen demonstrates slave owners’ willingness to remove a mother’s role in caring for her child for their own selfish gain. Children are born and raised to be the next generation of workers, and women are forced to reproduce and return to work. Despite this inhumane treatment, Paulsen shows time and again that Sarny wonders about her birth mother, clings to Mammy like she would her mother, and experiences a range of emotions such as hatred, fear, and compassion.
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