There are few literature works that use children as the main character in the story to give harmless, innocence or naïve character in the story. Some writers put children as main characters in their works to evoke the idea of kindness, compassion or warmth sensation in an essay. Nathaniel Hawthorne in “Little Annie’s Ramble” involves a child’s character as center story that pictured the innocence and harmless side of a young soul. The story is about a little girl named Annie that interact with an adult gentleman, together they stroll through the street circus in their town. Annie is a little girl that curious out of the crier’s announcement from the distance and try to find out what it is all about. At the same time a man looked at her from across the street and looked at Annie’s enthusiastically to find out what the crier had been speaking of.

The story taken from the adult perspective reminiscing how fin it is as a child and having a child’s mind. The man reminded him of his childhood when he looked back into the time when he was young and connect it with Annie’s curiosity. “She feels that impulse to go strolling away –that longing after the mystery of the great world– which many children feel, and which I felt in my childhood” (Hawthorne). This childhood moments resonance throughout the essay, it almost feels like Hawthorne try to bring readers to their own childhood memories. The reminiscence of the gentlemen brought  a up few times in the essay, for example on this passage:

“Here is a shop to which the recollections of my boyhood, as well as present partialities, give a peculiar magic. How delightful to let the fancy revel on the dainties of a confectioner; those pies, with such white and flaky paste, their contents being a mystery, whether rich mince, with whose plums intermixed, or piquant apple, delicately rose-flavored; those cakes, heart-shaped or round, piled in a lofty pyramid; those sweet little circlets, sweetly named kisses; those dark, majestic masses, fit to be bridal-loaves at the wedding of an heiress, mountains in size, their summits deeply snowcovered with sugar!” (Hawthorne).

In this passage, Hawthorne portrays in detail the dream or imagination of a little kid. He pictures how children love sweets and anything that has a connection with sugar. He also put the man in recollection moment when he was a little kid, the naïve feeling as a child towards the sweets. “Little Annie’s Ramble” show the pure innocence character of a child in an adult perspective, where the adult kind of envy how naïve, pristine and unadulterated minds.

In Little Annie’s Ramble, Nathaniel Hawthorne tells a story of an old man taking a stroll through town with a young girl, presumably his granddaughter or someone close to him. The Old man narrates the “ramble,” stopping to consider everything that catches little Annie’s attention. While reading and skimming through this text, the reading voice in my mind is that of a lively and joyful person. The written thoughts of this old man have exclamation points in almost every paragraph. I like that he appreciates the innocence and wide- eyed curiosity Annie has. “Sweet has been the charm of childhood on my spirit, throughout my ramble with little Annie!” This is something similar to what my loving Grandmother would tell my mother after spending an afternoon with my sister and me. There is a pattern in the text makes it an enjoyable read for me. Throughout the stroll, the old man is detailed in his observations when Annie stops to pay attention to something. He thinks about what it means to him, then, what it means in relation to Annie. He then pulls her along so she can experience something else
Little Annie’s Ramble touches on the differences between the way children and adults think. If you’re an adult, this text encourages us to pay attention to our surroundings. We shouldn’t take things in life for granted. There’s nothing wrong with being giddy with excitement or wide-eyed in amazement, these feelings are not supposed to be exclusive to children.

Cordelia the Crude  is a play written by Zora Neale Hurston.  As the title might suggest, there are several issues and themes surrounding the color of a person’s skin.  One of these recurring themes is insecurity.  Emma,  a black woman, becomes increasingly jealous of another character named Effie.  She suspects that her husband john will develop or has developed feelings for Effie because she is Biracial and has a light complexion.  These insecurities come to a head when Emma tries to pull her and john from a dancing competition out of fear for the attention he would recieve, specifically from Effe.  John not only dances, he dances with Effie as Emma’s replacement. This is the final straw for Emma because soon after they divorced and were apart for 20 years

Emma’s fears may have been irrational but for her they represented a very real advantage that lighter- skinned women have that darker women of color Don’t.  Oh, them half whites, they get everything!  They gets everything that everyone wants.”  Her percieved disadvantage to get some of the things that she wants worries her because  it means a lighter complexioned woman can easily take it. In this instance, its her husband, John.

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In the reading “Color Struck” by Zora Neale Hurston, it was a play based on colorism and the judgement that black individuals faced in their own communities. Hurston used Emmaline’s insecurity about her own complexion to portray her hatred for fair skinned black women. Throughout the play Emmaline was obsessed with the idea that light skinned women takes everything and they was going to take John away from her too.

Hurston displayed how hatred among these individuals stems from ones’s own hatred, by using Emmaline’s hatred against her in the most contradicting way. Even in her so called “hatred” Emmaline managed to have a baby by a white man thus producing the very thing she hates, a light skinned black woman. Hurston goes even further by extending her jealousy and hatred toward her sick daughter who received compassion from John, a man she “loved” and haven’t seen in over 20 years.

In my reading of the excerpt of “FIRE!!”, Wallace Thurman’s “Cordelia the Crude” stood out to me particularly. I found this piece to be very striking in the way it portrays the lives of many young African American women in 1920’s Harlem. Thurman uses humor and light diction in constructing his story of Cordelia, a sixteen-year-old girl who became involved in prostitution. One example of this that I found to be particularly insightful into Thurman’s beliefs on this was his use of the terms “game” to describe the relationship between the prostitutes and the men who were with them. After doing a close reading, I focused in on where this term occurs during the text in order to reach a conclusion about the meaning behind it.

When Thurman describes the situation of how the men in Harlem were approaching prostitutes – the particular location he uses in the story is the “Roosevelt Theatre” – he makes it seem playful, describing it as a game. The narrator makes it seem as though Cordelia is teasing him, walking in a way that seemed to be a “sway of invitation” to “play the game”. This specific diction was specifically chosen by Thurman, possibly to remark on Cordelia’s youth, and how the actions in which she is partaking are corrupting her, stealing her childhood, since “playing games” is often associated with youth. Similar to this, along with his allusion of prostitution to a “game”, Thurman also explains how the prostitutes “grow wise” when they have become aware that a man is pursuing them. When the narrator explains his experience with Cordelia, he states that she “let [him] know that she was wise”, meaning that she knew what his intentions were. But, Thurman’s choice of the word “wise”, seems odd for this scenario. This could be because this word has an underlying irony. The fact that Cordelia is “wise” about what the narrator wants from her is indicative of a loss of the naivety and ignorance that are associated with childhood innocence. Thus, Cordelia is an embodiment of the corruption of many young women who crossed paths with prostitution in Thurman’s Harlem.