Research Paper On Amelia Martin

Amelia Martin, is like many other young people who have angry parents. She wishes they would talk, laugh, and share good times together as they did in the past. In Amelia's mind, her family's tension and disagreement between the northern and southern states the abolitionists and the slave-holders. In many ways, the slavery issue is the cause of her family's problems.
Amelia's father had been a ship's captain. As an abolitionist, he harbored the leader of a slave rebellion. When the rebel slave was discovered on the ship, Mr. Martin was removed for his position. Now he is an assistant lighthouse keeper on Fenwick Island, off the coast of Delaware. Amelia's mother blames her husband for their living conditions, which she says are killing her.
Slavery is the deeper issue separating the two sides. She listens to their arguing about slaves and freedom. She prays for the newly elected President and thinks how she stands, helpless, between the two sides.
Amelia stands and watches in the lighthouse tower each day, lighting the lamps, cleaning the glass, and rescuing victims of the Atlantic's relentless tempests. Those quite hours alone in the lighthouse provide Amelia with time to think, read, and worry about her family and her country. She writes in her diary. "Sometimes, what I write here is all that keeps me calm. Putting the tumble of anger and fear down on paper gives me power over it. Then I don't feel so helpless....I do need a friend on Fenwick Island. You, dear diary, should do perfectly” (Hesse).