There Are No Children Here

What are the major struggles and conflicts that your characters encounter? How do the characters face the conflicts and how does going through these conflicts help the characters to learn more about themselves?


The most vivid struggles Pharoah and Lafeyette had to over come in the novel There Are No children Here was the potentially deadly dangers of their poverty stricken neighborhood. In these ghettos numerous gangs were threts to the citizens of this poor area of Chicago, including the children. One day when Lafeyette and his 9 year old cousin Dede are outside a sudden fight between two gangs erupts, "Suddenly, gunfire erupted. The frightened children fell to the ground. 'Hold your head down!'" (Kotlowitz 9). The fact that these children cannot help but witness the brutal actions of the gangs is heart breaking, its not their falt that they were born into such harsh and brutal situations. However, through out the novel you see the children tempted by curupt actions, yet held back by their own self consience and by the guidence of thier mother, LaJoe, who had 'failed' some of her previous children and neglected when they got into drugs, and other illegal actions. "In the late 1960s the nation's black ghettoes were filled with rage and fury, a stark contrast to the resigationand personal excesses of the late 1980s" (Kotlowitz 162). This quote just shows to what extent the 'projects' where a bad place for children to grow up. Its very hard for me to imagine the struggle LaJoe and her family percervired through inorder to survive and be contenders in the economy. I personally think their environment was hardest conflict to over come and it built their up character but allowing them to expoerience things many adults have not.

Another major conflict for Pharoah and Lafeyette through out the novel is their recognition of the racial descrimination they will have to over come not only in the present but in the future as well. The whites in America were keepiong things very segregated at the time of this novel, and it was extreamly hard for blacks to overcome these barriers, regardless of their monetary status. Major role models for blacks, such as Malcom X, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King Jr. were being shut down and the government wasnt being fare at all. "White America seems intent on ignoring pleas for equality in the schools, in housing, and in health care. ...'Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white-separate but unequal'" (Kotlowitz 162 & 163). The agnoledgement of the terible descrimination against blacks was neglected continuously, and for Pharoah and Lafeyette, it was very difficult for them to rise above it. They got in a few arguments with cops as they grew up, mainly because they were blacks, but we see the boys slowly but surely noticing the diffenet roles of blacks and whites in their point and time.