American Revolution
As the running water turns warm for you to do the dishes, you think back to the good old days. Where your family was alive, when you had a house, when you had a life. How great you really had it, and then it was all gone before you knew it. You remember that moment like the back of your hand…...
You were out in the backyard picking out vegetables for dinner. As your getting the last few potatoes, you hear gunshots down the road. You hear screaming and you are too far away from your house, so you run. Run as fast as you can to your hiding spot that no one else knows about. As you're running you here your mom screaming.
"Take me, not him. Please." She says as she starts to cry.
Instantly you know that it's the redcoats and you need to get away, and fast. You climb into your hiding spot and just wait until you know the coast is clear. It's already been a day and you can finally hear nothing in the distance, no gun shots like all of last night. You wander back to your house hoping to find your family safe and cooking breakfast in the house, but all you find is your entire family dead. You can never forget that picture in your mind, finding everyone that has been in your life since forever, dead. Gone for the rest of your life, and will never return.
As you return from your daydream you here your boss yell your name to come clean up some customers dishes. Now your back to work, all alone in this big world, without anyone. This is how Hannah feels in the book, Hannah Pritchard: Pirate of the Revolution, by Bonnie Pryor. Hannah lost her family from the Redcoats and is looking for revenge, and is the only way to seek that by pretending to be something she's not?
Life is very hard when you lose someone close to you, especially when you lose your entire family. People can take deaths in many different ways, even by killing themselves, which is never the right option. Murders can sometimes be the worst type of death because no one ever see’s it coming. Lately crime rates have dropped in the U.S. In the article Murder Rate in the U.S, a reporter explains how murder rate has reduced, and has been getting better in the past few years. "Crime overall was down about 11 per cent in New York and 12 per cent in Chicago. The number of murders in Dallas fell for a second straight year in 2009 to its lowest mark since 1967.” (Service) Some states are showing great improvement in murder rates, and hopefully the rates continue to come down. Just like in the book, Hannah knows what it's like to lose people close to you out of nowhere. And it's good to see the number reducing to people murdered in the U.S.
Back in the old times, it was never easy to make money and a living for yourself. Hannah knows exactly how that feels. She had to get a job and make money for herself without any help from any family, considering she really didn’t have any left. Most jobs that you would have back then was either helping your parents out with their jobs or finding your own. But if you were a boy sometimes you could become a cabin boy on a ship("pirate ship"). As a cabin boy you clean and cook for the crew, and pretty much assist people on the boat as much as you can. Girls weren't aloud to take this job because most girls were supposed to take after their mom in cooking or running businesses. In the book, Hannah becomes a cabin boy on a ship called the Sea Hawk, she pretended to be a boy so she had a free place to stay, and eat at. This wasn't a very common thing that happened in this time period, but in Hannah's case, it was completely necessary.
Another thing that is different from our time is that women could not fight in wars. They were found not as strong and not as intelligent. This was really hard, especially if you were put in Hannah's perspective because she needed a way to get back at the British. Most women would become nurses, and help out with injured soldiers during the war because they weren't certified to fight. Fighting in the war was one of the only ways Hannah felt like she was getting back at the British for what they did to her family. But sadly, that wasn't a possibility for Hannah. She could only become a nurse, which she wasn't old enough to become yet. In a short article I read, the author explained how women's lives changed once the war was over. A part in the article read, "Women's lives began to change with the American Revolution. Every war means more women taking charge during the absence and after the deaths of husbands and fathers. After the war, talk of rights raised issues of women's rights and education." (Times)This is very similar to Hannah's story because her life changed a lot after and during the war, because of the absence of her family. Many other lives of woman changed, not just Hannah's, due to the loss of family and friends. Overall, the American Revolution was a long and painful period of time for some people, even though the Americans ended up winning the war.
Throughout the story, Hannah starts to become something she's not. But in the end, it becomes part of her, and she is not going to regret the decision she made. Life is all about choosing the right road, and sticking to that plan, even if there's some bumps along the way. Hannah's life is just that, a long road, that can't be understood, because there are so many bumps in the way. But once she gets to the end of that road, she won't regret any of the things she did, because she ended up where she wanted to be. And that's where she will stay, until a new road comes along, and sweeps her away into a new adventure.
Bibliography
Service, Mail Foreign. Mail Online. 8 January 2010. 25 January 2011
Times, The New York. Women and the American Revolution. 2011. 25 January 2011
