64 pages • 2 hours read
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
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BetaChapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
On Saturday morning, about a week after the white men drove to the Logans’ home, Cassie churns butter. Big Ma and Mary worry that she and her brothers seem listless or sick. Cassie reveals that she told her brothers about the white men. She loses her balance, falls, and breaks a dish. Mary sends Cassie to sit with her brothers, who listen to T.J. tell them how to avoid hard work. T.J. attempts to excite the Logan children with gossip and schemes, but they resist his attempts until he brings up the “night men” (73). T.J. says that the white men Cassie saw tarred and feathered a Black man for quarrelling with Jim Lee Barnett, a white shopkeeper. The Logans privately feel relief that the school bus accident did not motivate the white men, after all. Christopher-John and Little Man wonder if the white men will tar and feather the Logans should they learn the truth about the bus. When T.J. lingers inside their home, the Logan children suspect him of trying to steal test answers from Mary’s book. T.J. denies any wrongdoing.
Cassie tells how she and her younger brothers have taken to Mr. Morrison, who now lives in a shack on their property. Stacey keeps his distance from Mr. Morrison, resentful that his father thought the family needed another man to protect them in David’s absence. On a walk to school, T.J. shows Stacey answers to one of Mary’s tests. Stacey rips the paper and tosses it into the gully. After school, Cassie learns that Mary whipped Stacey as punishment for cheating in class. Stacey took new “cheat notes” away from T.J. and did not say that the notes belonged to T.J. when Mary caught him (82). Stacey follows T.J. to the Wallace store with Christopher-John, Little Man, and Cassie close behind.
Cassie explains that the Wallace store once served as a store on the Granger plantation. White men at the store laugh at Cassie and her siblings and describe them using a racial slur. In a back room, Black couples from school dance. Stacey chases T.J. from the room. They wrestle in the yard. Mr. Morrison appears and breaks up the fight. He drives the Logan children home in their wagon. Mr. Morrison says that the children should tell Mary where they went. Stacey agrees and behaves more warmly toward Mr. Morrison.
As the children return home, they see Mr. Granger’s Packard leaving the driveway. Big Ma tells them that Mr. Granger asked again about buying their land. Cassie follows Big Ma to a pond on their property. A white man pressured Big Ma into selling trees near the pond, and she believes her late husband, Paul Edward, would be sad to see the trees gone. Big Ma tells Cassie a familiar story about how her grandfather was born into slavery and worked in a furniture shop after the Civil War. He bought half the family’s land, which previously belonged to the Grangers, from a Northerner, and the other half from a fair lawyer named Mr. Jamison. Mr. Granger dislikes Mr. Jamison for selling land to the Logans instead of to him. Big Ma says that she will never sell the land back to Mr. Granger.
Stacey tells Mary that he fought T.J. at the Wallace story without mentioning that the cheat notes belonged to T.J. Mary sends all the children to bed early. On Saturday, Mary takes the children on a long wagon ride. They visit and take food to the Berry family. Cassie sees Mr. Berry, badly scarred by his burning. On the ride home, Mary says that the Wallaces burned Mr. Berry. She tells them never to visit the Wallace store again. Mary stops the wagon at other families’ homes. She asks them to prevent their children from going to the Wallaces’s store, and to consider shopping elsewhere. One man, Mr. Turner, tells Mary that he receives credits to the Wallace store as payment for his farming and has no money to shop elsewhere. Mary ponders a system in which one family travels to a different store and returns with supplies for many Black families.
Chapter 5 Summary
On a Saturday in December, Cassie, Stacey, and T.J. accompany Big Ma to the town of Strawberry, where Big Ma sells butter, milk, and eggs from the family’s wagon. Cassie longs to see Strawberry but finds the “sad, red place” disappointing (104). Big Ma parks the wagon away from those of white people also selling goods. Cassie worries that their location will affect Big Ma’s sales. In the afternoon, Big Ma drives to Mr. Jamison’s law office. Cassie wants to visit Mr. Jamison, who treats her family respectfully. Big Ma tells her to wait in the wagon with Stacey and T.J.
T.J. convinces Cassie and Stacey to go shopping at the Barnett Mercantile instead of waiting for Big Ma. He admires a gun and tells Cassie how he intends to use it for protection. T.J. gives his mother’s shopping list to Mr. Barnett. The shopkeeper begins filling T.J.’s order but stops to assist white customers. Cassie grows impatient, and then angry. She reminds Mr. Barnett to fill T.J.’s order and says he treats them unfairly. Mr. Barnett orders Cassie away and uses a racial slur to describe her, drawing the attention of other customers (111). Cassie yells at him until Stacey, sensing danger, leads Cassie away.
On the sidewalk, Cassie bumps into Jeremy’s sister, Lillian Jean. Lillian Jean demands an apology but finds Cassie’s unsatisfactory. She calls Cassie “nasty” and orders her to walk in the road instead of on the sidewalk (114). Cassie argues with Lillian Jean. Jeremy, in Strawberry with Lillian Jean, asks his sister to leave Cassie alone. Lillian Jean refuses and tries to push Cassie off the sidewalk. Her father, Mr. Simms, appears and helps shove Cassie into the road. A crowd gathers. Mr. Simms orders Cassie to apologize again. Jeremy tries to defend Cassie, but his father does not listen to him. Cassie worries that Mr. Simms will hit her. Big Ma arrives to take Cassie home. Mr. Simms continues to demand that Cassie apologize. Big Ma looks scared and urges Cassie to comply. Cassie cries as she apologizes. In the wagon, she thinks: “No day in all my life had ever been as cruel as this one” (116).
Chapter 6 Summary
Cassie broods during a long, quiet ride home from Strawberry. Stacey urges Cassie not to blame Big Ma for forcing Cassie to apologize, but she resists. Cassie believes Big Ma should have stood up for her. Stacey and Cassie’s argument ends when they see a Packard like Mr. Granger’s parked in their barn. The Packard belongs to their Uncle Hammer, David’s older brother. Uncle Hammer lives in Chicago but comes to visit around Christmastime. Cassie finds Uncle Hammer aloof but feels happy to see him and surprised that he owns the same car as Mr. Granger does.
Big Ma tries to keep Cassie from telling Uncle Hammer about the trip to Strawberry, afraid that he will seek revenge on the Simms family. Cassie tells him anyway. Uncle Hammer applauds Cassie’s courage in speaking to Mr. Barnett but grows angry when Cassie says that Mr. Simms knocked her into the road. Over Mary’s protests Hammer storms from the house and drives away in his car. Mary sends Mr. Morrison with Hammer. Mary orders the children to bed and then talks with Cassie about Big Ma. She explains that Big Ma acted to protect Cassie. Mary puts Cassie’s experience with racism in context. She tells her about their family’s history as slaves and how slavery allowed white people to believe that Black people “weren’t really people like everybody else” (128). Mary encourages Cassie to make the best of her life.
Cassie awakens to find Uncle Hammer home and unhurt. Mama tells Cassie that Uncle Hammer will take the family to church in his car. Cassie watches Mary dress for church and asks for help with her hair. As the children wait to leave for church, Stacey tells Cassie that Mr. Morrison kept Uncle Hammer from approaching Mr. Simms. Cassie wishes that Uncle Hammer had gotten revenge, but Stacey advises her that Uncle Hammer would have endangered his own life by doing so. Uncle Hammer emerges and, noticing Stacey’s tattered jacket, gifts him a new coat as an early Christmas present. Stacey proudly wears the coat to church. T.J. teases Stacey. He says that Stacey looks like a preacher in the coat.
Uncle Hammer drives the Logans in his Packard. He stops by the Jefferson Davis School, where he says that he wishes he could “burn that place out” (138). Hammer expresses frustration with the treatment of Black Americans. The Logans approach a one-way bridge. A car on the opposite side assumes that they are in Mr. Granger’s Packard and pauses to let them go first. As Uncle Hammer drives over the bridge, Cassie and her family realize that the Wallaces are in the other car. Mary worries that the family will suffer for the encounter.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Chapters 4-6 show how Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry functions as a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story in which the main character grows by learning about their world. Cassie experiences increasingly egregious racism in these chapters and processes her feelings about it with help from her family. Mary, in particular, provides historical context for Cassie’s unfair treatment by tracing its roots back to slavery: “even though seventy years have passed since slavery,” she tells Cassie, “most white people still think of us as they did then—that we’re not as good as they are” (129). Lillian Jean, who emerges as Cassie’s direct antagonist in these chapters, typifies this type of thinking. Cassie’s experiences and her mother’s words fundamentally change how Cassie understands her life. She notices “a sinking feeling in [her] stomach” and she “felt as if the world had turned itself upside down with [her] in it” (129). Though Cassie’s growth continues in the novel, these chapters contain the frankest discussion of her education.
These chapters contain much of the novel’s rising action. They develop conflicts that later escalate and become central to the novel’s plot. Mr. Granger’s attempts to reclaim the Logans’ land pick up momentum here, as do T.J.’s lapses in judgment. While T.J. initially acted as a mere nuisance to Cassie and her brothers, his actions grow concerning in Chapter 4. By stealing answers to tests, fighting with Stacey, and running off to the Wallace store, T.J. exhibits destructive behavior that eventually ruins his life. Cassie foreshadows the particulars of T.J.’s undoing when she describes her visit to the Barnett Mercantile. T.J. admires the gun that he and Simms brothers later steal, saying, “I’d sell my life for that gun. One of these days I’m gonna have it, too” (108).
The novel broadens its scope by using dialogue between characters to reveal historical details of Black American life. Big Ma, for instance, tells Cassie how her husband was “Born into slavery two years ‘fore freedom come” (90). She explains how Paul Edward came to buy the Logan family’s land, referencing one of the novel’s major themes. Readers understand why the Logans care so deeply about owning their own land in part because of Big Ma’s explanation. The arrival of Uncle Hammer in Mississippi also widens the novel’s perspective by introducing a character who no longer lives in the South. Uncle Hammer expresses impatience with racist Southerners and flouts their customs more boldly than most other Black characters. Cassie feels validated in her frustration when she witnesses Hammer’s rage.
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