Analysis Of Jonathan Kozol's Amazing Grace

The book, Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation by Jonathan Kozol is about his experiences with the children and families in the South Bronx, New York. In this story, Kozol is taking a walk with a seven year old boy, Cliffe, who is energetic and charmingly strange. In this walk, Cliffe shows Kozol around the neighborhood. By this walk around the neighborhood, Kozol learns about how the South Bronx is polluted, where people take drugs, and the teddy bears on the trees. The message that Kozol is trying to tell us through this story is that there is always something sweet, even in the most miserable places. One humid afternoon, Kozol for the first time saw a woman carrying a newborn baby in the St. ann’s Church with three little girls around her, “Carrying a newborn baby… surrounded by three lively
This shows Cliffe is being really helpful because he is giving a homeless man his food, since he is hungry. As people say, sharing is caring and it is never bad to give something to someone when they need you to. Even in a place like the South Bronx there are sweet people who will share their belongs with homeless people, who can’t afford to buy anything.
To sum it up, Kozol is saying that there is continually something sweet, even in the most hopeless spots, “There are children in the poorest , most abandoned places...cheerful anyway.” (p.4, l.19-23). This tells that in the South Bronx there are many children who are needy, deserted, in spite of the torments and toxins that the world has pumped into their lives, but when you meet them for the first ever time, they are delighted anyhow! Jonathan Kozol’s message from the story “Amazing Grace” is that there always something sweet, even in the most miserable