As most others who read this alphabet, what struck me the most were both the language used, and the crude drawings portrayed. Particularly for the letter A, the donkey bucks Amos into ‘Gramer Schole’ or, when someone is suffering some sort of punishment, their faces get screwed up into a somewhat humorous position. I do think that these things make the story easier for children to understand but, I’m kinda uncertain as to whether the author is trying to entertain or make a statement and to that point I’m not really sure as to what that statement is. It seems to be that according to a few different dictionaries, “coon” is a derogatory term. I’m not really sure then, linked with everything else, if this is all meant to be a mockery of slavery or to support it. In most of the letters the characters tend to be doing something fundamentally wrong and are therefore punished for it in some way or another: the children take too many grapes and are then sick or, Hiram tries to open the door with his foot and the whole soup spills on him. I think what I’m trying to show is that it seems that when these “coons” are doing some sort of activity that was normal for a slave at that time, they mess it up but when they are left to themselves, they get in all kinds of mischief and seem to hurt someone or another. In that I am unsure as to what the author is trying to get at…

I also found it really interesting to think more about some of the names used: Didimus, Ezra, Amos, Hiram, Xerxy [back to the Xerxes post from before]…etc. These all seem to be biblical names of a sort. This could be stressing the importance of the bible at that time? The other thing that was really interesting was the use of the word mendicant. I actually had to look it up because I was unsure as to what it meant. It Means one who relies chiefly on donations to survive, which I wonder whether children would know or not.

I feel like perhaps this could really be compared to slapstick comedy of today. Today, the three stooges would knock each other around but, before a child would cause mischief and have a soup dumped on him. Perhaps enjoyable to children but a kinda mixed up message.