Unbound By Ann Burg: Chapter Summary

Introduction Ann Burg’s novel in verse “unbound” the theme in the beginning of the book is that there is no escape from pain”. The stories main character grace is a slave along with her family. Grace works in what they call “the big house” while her parents work in the fields. Grace is working under bad conditions because her master the misses is very mean and erratic.
From the very beginning grace and her family have been put into a bad environment. Grace masters are master Allen and the misses. Aunt tempie states “The missus is mean/ as a hornet/ what's protecting its nest/ stay away from the missus.” The missus is very strict to grace, but on the contrary grace is very repellent to the missus. Mama and uncle jim are also being abused and are not treated correctly. I can infer this because on page 59 the novel states “Uncle moses is thin / like mama / and he's old” This is important to know because usually people who are very thin dont get fed. With this in mind i think they aren't being fed. Their masters are also a ticking time bomb. I say this because master Allen and the missus can send them away anytime they want, this actually happens when jordan ran away and the masters needed money. The family knows when they hear the word auction it's not good so they run away covering their tracks.
Once grace is on the run uncle jim leads the way, they then find a man of the name OleGorgeCooper.
OleGorgeCooper leads then into a hidden cave to stay for a while until the path is safe. Despite all of this grace still feels unsafe and scared. This quote from page 277 described the feeling of the journey “There's nothin round me but my own fears growin like mushrooms after a storm.” from past experiences in the novel i can infer that grace is scared of wild dangerous animals and patierollers. During her trip she has nearly encountered a pattyroller and has encountered dangerous or even deadly creatures and does not want to encounter them
again.
There is no escape from the pain that the family is feeling even after leaving the big house. An argument could be said that the theme of the story is “Family helps people overcome obstacles”. Family does have a huge role in overcoming challenges for example when they had to kill that snake in the cave. But this theme statement does not account for the errors in the family. Grace believes that she lead the whole family into this situation because she way being disrespectful to her masters. Even when they left their masters they are still in danger and cannot escape from it. Family cannot protect people from everything.
Even after their escape from their biggest danger they still have to