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Foreshadowing In The Whipping Boy

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The Whipping Boy When you’re used to living under certain circumstances where you’re being oppressed, it can be difficult to adjust to a new lifestyle where you’re suddenly allowed to control your own actions; furthermore, an American lifestyle where freedom is one of your basic values and a mindset of desire. How do 3 oppressed slaves determinate their ability to be themselves, and not be controlled by the confederation states? On January 1st, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln gave an order. This order was the so-called Emancipation Proclamation; it proclaimed that all slaves in the confederate states were freed as slaves. The purpose of the Civil War had now taken a turn, and changed entirely. The fight to preserve the Union had now changed …show more content…

Tommy is a very sensitive guy; “Tommy started to cry with euphoria, rocking in his chair like a child.” After becoming a free man he kills one of the dogs together with Mikey. An abolitionist told Tommy that he’s a freeman now and that he’s allowed to do whatever he wants to. Foreshadowing means that we are being warned about what is going to happen later in the story. There is an example of foreshadowing in the first five lines, where the slaves receive their freedom from the Emancipation Proclamation, and afterwards kill the dogs because they can’t remember what it’s like to make their own decisions. The killings are described very brutal and harsh; "Rex and Shepherd Gage were stabbed through the head with pitchforks by Gage's Mikey and Gage's Tommy as they dozed in the midday heat near their kennel. When reading this story, it makes the readers feel sympathy for the slaves, and it makes the ending even more tragic, since they die. The writer has an extreme use of pathos in his text; Richard draws the audience in and make us feel sympathy with the slaves; we’re so happy that the Emancipation Proclamation and the abolitionists made slaves freemen but we’re angry, hurt and confused when it ends with the slaves dying on their way to the northern, slave free

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