Poor Ticey Taking Life By The Horns

I am reading the novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines, which tells the story of Miss jane, a fictional charatcer who lives in 1962 as a 100-something year old woman in Louisiana who tells her story about the civil war through modern history to a white reporter. I am almost done with the first book of four. Instead of chapters, there are books representing different time periods of Miss Jane's life. The first book is titled The War Years Miss Jane grew up on a plantation and Big Laura was a very large and strong slave woman who took care of Ticey as ifshe was her own. Yankee troops came to the plantation when the civil war was nearing its end , and soldier Corporal Brown told her that Ticey was a slave name and that she was a free girl now. So he named her Jane Brown, afer himself, however this didn't go over well with her slave owner and she was beaten because she reffered to herself as jane and no longer Ticey. When a large gropu of slaves including jane left for the North, they were ambushed by the Secesh Army and they were all brutally massacred, only Jane and Big Laura's toddler Ned survived by hiding in a bush. They then lived together as basically mother and son. My reaction to my reading so far is that I feel major sympathy for Jane. She was only nine years old taking care of a 3 year old. They can barely eat and drink, trying to travel to Ohio, meanwhile they are nowhere near leaving Louisiana. I find it very apalling that Janie's slave master beat her until she stopped calling herself Janie, that is very disturbing. Oh and by the way she was bathed until she started to bleed because she never reffered to herself as Ticey ever again. I am glad that she kept her name as Jane and I hope she experiences some better times in her life, before racism makes her life tumble to the ground again. Ta Ta for Now!