Literature: The Young Warriors
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| V. S. Reid |
INTRODUCTION
TO THE TEXT
THE YOUNG WARRIORS
- Title explanation: The title of the book is The Young warriors. The title refers to 5 young boys who train to become a Young Warrior.
- Author: Victor Stafford Reid (1 May 1913 – 25 August 1987) was a Jamaican writer born in Kingston, Jamaica, who wrote with an intent of influencing the younger generations. He was awarded the silver and gold Musgrave Medals, the Order of Jamaica and the Norman Manley Award for Excellence in Literature in 1981. He was the author of several novels, three of which were aimed towards children, one play production, and several short stories.
- Type of book: West Indian (Postcolonial Literature)
- Period written: In the 1960’s
- Theme: War
- Characters: Main Characters: Tommy, Johnny, Charlie, David and Uriah.
- Sub Characters: Chief Phillip, Juan de Bolas, Chief James, Captain Dick, Peter, Jim, John.
- Setting: Trelawny Town and in the Mountains
- Length of the story: a few months
- Motives: Hatred (between The Maroons and The Redcoats)
- Point of view: Third Person
Synopsis
The Young Warriors is a Jamaican novel by
author Victor Stafford Reid, published in 1967.
Five teenage boys,
members of a band of Maroons (runaway slaves in Jamaica during the 19th to
early 20th century) living in the Maroon community of Mountain Top, pass their
village's initiation tests for them to be recognized as young Maroon warriors.
However, when they go out into the woods for a celebratory hunt as per their
custom, they inadvertently discover that the British Redcoat soldiers, nemeses
of the Maroons, are patrolling within the area.
What follows is a
daring attempt by two of the boys, Tommy and Johnny, to seek aid from a neighbouring
Maroon band to prevent the Redcoats from learning Mountain Top's location, a
mission that doubles in urgency with every passing hour.
The novel was
published by Pearson Schools, and is used in Jamaican [and other regional and
extraregional] schools as an English Literature textbook. While the story
itself is fictional in nature, it provides a view of the historical facts
pertaining to the struggle between the Maroons and the Redcoats in Jamaica.
A selection of video presentations on the Maroons in Jamaica and the British Redcoats:
[should difficulties arise with videos, use links provided]
[should difficulties arise with videos, use links provided]
Jamaican Maroons on CACE INT'L TV
The British Redcoats
Nanny Town Rediscovered
Akwantu the Journey Official Trailer
A character sketch of
the five young warriors:
- Charlie—round character—jealous, boastful, dishonest, careless and fearful at first then he became selfless and brave at the end.
- Uriah & David—flat characters; David-a great storyteller. Brave. He risked his life, telling a story to a group of Redcoat soldiers so that Tommy could free Charlie who was previously captured by the Redcoats.
- Johnny—Brave; selfless (risked his life for his village); a keen listener; very attuned to his surroundings; thoughtful/pensive and perceptive.
- Tommy—main Protagonist; brave; skillful (won most of the tests); selfless (risked his life for his village); dependable (the Chief trusted him and Johnny to go to Mocho Mountain and ask them for help; thoughtful (didn't want to hurt Charlie's feelings after he found out that Charlie had cheated on the run to Lookout Rock.
Tropes/Themes present in The Young Warriors:
- Big Eater: David.
- Intimidating/Tough Grandpa: Chief Phillip.
- Batman Gambit: The whole plot to distract the Redcoats while Tommy and Johnny slip through their lines to seek out help from the Mocho Maroons. The later set-up for the Starapple Gully ambush becomes this as well.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: The captain of the Redcoat army threatens to do this to get both the location of Mountain Top and the plans to summon the Mocho Maroons.
- Commander Contrarian: Charlie.
- Chekhov's Skill: David's storytelling ability, used early in the novel to entertain the boys during their night out hunting.
- Death Glare: Charlie's father gives him one when he initially fails to answer Chief Phillip's questions during the question-and-answer session of the initial trials. This is largely because the boys have had to study their people's history for some time prior to the day of the trials. If a boy fails to answer the questions correctly, he has to wait a whole year before he can try again to become a young warrior (and if he fails the second time, he'll never become one).
- Dishonest Dastardly Stops to Cheat: Charlie, during the final test in the initial chapters, disobeys the rules of the foot-race by eating food and then turning back without completing the full length of the race.
- Five-Man Band: The five central protagonists.
o The Lancer: Johnny/Charlie
o The Big Guy: David
o The Smart Guy: Uriah
o The Wise One / The Heart & Soul: Johnny
- Full-Boar
Action: Tommy and
Johnny come across a wild boar during their mission, and have to climb a
tree to try and escape from him.
- Hidden
in Plain Sight: All
Maroons are trained to blend in with the forest surroundings to avoid
detection; they do this by wearing leaves on their bodies, so that they
appear to be small trees when they stand up next to the genuine articles.
The five boys use this on one occasion to hide in the open from a Redcoat
soldier.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: While all Maroons are trained to have good aim when using knives, slings and bows, Tommy and Uriah get to show their skills during the initiation trials to qualify them as young warriors. In one of the tests, the boys are expected to shoot arrows through four holes that decrease in size with each target; while the other boys either miss the last target or have their arrows damaged while passing through it (in Charlie's case), Tommy manages to get his arrow through all the holes without a problem. In the knife-throwing tests, they have to throw knives at a bull's-eye target and at a naseberry fruit that's been thrown into the air; regarding the second test, Uriah is the only one to send his knife right through the fruit and cause the knife to land on its point.
- Obnoxious: Charlie. He matures.
- Oh, Crap!: Tommy and Johnny's reaction on realizing they've stumbled upon a wild boar's den. They quickly scramble to find a tree to climb to get out of the pig's way before he charges out of his hole.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Chief Phillip, and the war captain Dick. Also, Chief James of the Mocho Maroons.
- The Resenter: Charlie is this for much of the novel. He feels that he, not Tommy, should have been selected to lead the boys on their celebratory hunt by virtue of being the oldest and "winning" the hardest of the four initiation tests (Tommy was selected because he won two of the four), and later feels that he, not Tommy and Johnny, should have been sent to find the Mocho Maroons.
- Secret Secret-Keeper: Tommy and Johnny, witnessing Charlie's cheating during the foot-race, keep it to themselves for most of the novel, with Tommy later and briefly revealing this knowledge to Charlie during a Shut Up, Hannibal! moment.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Those Maroons who have sufficient training can do this. David later utilizes this during his Crowning Moment of Awesome.
COMMUNITY REVIEWS:
Retrieved from: http://1-1campionlearning.blogspot.com/2011/12/young-warriors.html
- Jul 24, 2012 Shulonie Mccalla
I love it… the adventures, the skill, the
expertise that the Maroons used to fool the Redcoats… but I wonder how comes Charlie
became a hero in the end~this
is my school’s literature book.
I loved this book and I thought that it was
nice for the Maroons to defeat the Redcoats.
It was fun. Johnny rules!
I think the book is awesome. I would suggest
it to everybody who likes to read. I had to read it for English Lit for school.
So awesome!
It was very boring. Although it was about a warrior,
it could have been more exciting, shorter, and spicier.
It’s really interesting. I love it. My teacher
read it for literature.
I read an earlier edition of this book in
school in the early 70s. It led my mother to tell us more about the 'Maroons'
as her grandfather told her. The interesting thing about this book, short as
the story is, it contain more truths than the primary history text schools were
'given' back then.
I THINK THIS BOOK IS VERY AWFUL BECAUSE
EVERYTHING FOR ENGLISH B IS ONLY YOUNG WARRIORS. I AM JUST FED UP SEEING,
WORKING AND READING THIS BOOK. LOL.
Love it… one of my best-read books from 1st
Form in high school… real page-turner… could not stop reading 'till it end.
