Ellen Foster Essay

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The novel Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons follows an adolescent named Ellen through the difficult times she had to face. Ellen was raised in an abusive household and was forced to be put into the foster care system. Gibbons wrote this novel to aware the world about the child abusive epidemic that took place. In the novel, Ellen is a ten year old girl who is physically, mentally, and evidence of sexually abused by her father. Although Ellen is at a very young age she is intelligent. She was always aware that the things her father did was wrong and hated him for it; she sometimes wished death upon him, “When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy. The way I liked best was letting go a poisonous spider in his bed.” (1). If Ellen wasn’t as smart as she was there is a significant chance her father could have killed her. The novel takes place in a time of segregation. Even though Ellen lived in an abusive environment she still felt like she was much above African Americans. Although she was completely wrong. Ellen moved in with her grandmother and started working on a cotton field and grew close to another worker named Mavis. After growing close to Mavis, Ellen realized she has no real reason to feel above African Americans just because she is white. She saw the way they work and the way they treat each other and she realized she was being unfair and rude. Especially to her best friend Starletta, Ellen says at the end of the novel, “Well I came to your house so much because I did not want to be with my daddy and mostly because I like you so much.” (125) Kaye Gibbons wrote Ellen Foster for the world to understand that child abuse is a very serious thing and no one is taking an action for it. It landed on Oprah’s best read’s lists and people started to understand that the

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