"Things are tough overseas"

The quote that stuck out to me most because of the poetic nature of the line is, “Lightening flashed around the island, thunder played its favorite game of scaring the carp out of all the shivering mortals on earth below.” However the quote that is repeated several times throughout the novel are the ones in which Mrs. Brown says, “You’re overseas now,” and “Things are tough overseas…” to Mr. Conroy. These give a good insight to Mrs. Brown’s excuse to the poor condition of the school and the student’s current levels.

Mrs. Brown seems to be part of the problem with the Yamacraw Island School. I don’t think it’s necessarily all her fault, I believe she is just acting in a way in which she thinks people in charge of her want to her act and control the students and the only way she knows that “works”. Mrs. Brown is a very interesting character in this chapter. I believe she acts in which the way she feels the white men in charge want her to act because she wants to appear to be on a sort of level she has in her mind as the white people she feels she needs to impress. The children that have come from Mrs. Brown’s class don’t know a significant amount of anything. I think this is partly because she thinks most of them are slow and lazy and that some are retarded so she probably treats them like they are these things and doesn’t challenge them or expect them to learn. It appears they have been taught to agree with the teacher or whoever and have not been taught to think for themselves. It seems the school board thinks Mrs. Brown is doing a good job because they have not heard any complaints from her about the problems of the school. This is one reason why they keep telling Mr. Conroy there are many problems on the island but no one knows exactly what the problems entail. Although Mrs. Brown so far does not appear to agree with Mr. Conroy’s teaching styles and has already reprimanded him once for rough housing with one of his students, his class has already been given insight and learned more about the world surrounding them than it appears they have the whole time they have been in school.