Friday, April 29, 2011

Harlem on Lock: Book Review

Posted by Ale'ah Bashir-Baaqee at 10:00 PM

Harlem on Lock
  1. Pick a character that interested you and write about them in depth. You can also analyze a relationship between two different characters.
Harlem on Lock is a fictional book written by Karen Williams. The name Harlem on Lock explains the book perfectly; Harlem is the name of the main character. This book portrays Harlem struggles and finding the perfect dad and man to love her. She does this while going  from the projects to a beautiful upscale life after the death of her heroin addicted mother and her heroin addicted father who raped her. A drug dealer name chief saves her but then makes her his sex prisoner basically, and throughout the book Harlem has to try and leave while getting her real man back , and still finding out about her two fathers. Pick a character that interested you and write about them in depth. You can also analyze a relationship between two different characters. Obliviously now by reading I'm going to talk about the main Character Harlem and her four different male relationships. I'm going to compare:
 
- Stuckey (Real father) vs. Uncle Earl (fake father for eighteen years)
- Savior (Neighborhood Crush) vs. Chief (Abusive drug dealer)
 
Savior is the man who grew up next to Harlem in the LA project he, one day after he realizes that Harlem didn’t have a Christmas she ends up going shopping with her neighborhood crush Savior who's a couple years older than her. Then savior takes her to a swap me and said to her "I'm getting out out of here real son. Maybe somewhere like Colorado. Build a life out there. How bout it, Harlem? Would you leave with me?" then she says yes (Page-39). The relationship between theses two characters is on and off but basically it’s much better than her and chief.
When Harlem gets home one day her dad hits and her and someone jumps her dad which then causes her mom to take them to the hospital so then Harlem has to do a stripper job but then savior comes and saves her from that too. Then Aja the mom dies of a drug overdose than her dad to make money takes her virginity so she can start prostituting out of her house. This time around Savior can't save Harlem because he got arrested but she doesn’t know that so. The prostituting leads to chief the head drug roller taking care of Harlem for a whole year but that comes with a price, of being his girl but that comes with pain.
Chief is a horrible drug dealer that at first teaches Harlem that you can still be fine and rich. He takes her in after raping. But then after a while of chief being nice he loses it and starts to make crazy sex tapes, raping her in front of friends, and even once at her birthday party she didn’t want to sleep with chiefs friend so he drown her in the pool in front of everybody. Who was this hero to save her Savior was.
The difference between Savior and Chief when it comes to Harlem is that Chief is the real hero he doesn’t beat Harlem in to making her do things. Chief has a serious control problem and when the major drug dealer that was before him goes to jail for 20 years and comes out he even tries to put Harlem in harm’s way. The way he treats her is not like her man, but after being brought up in the projects and never having anything when she met chief all of that changed for good. She was blinded by all the shopping he could do for her, she couldn’t look past that. But the thing is Savior could have got her all of that. But when he’s arrested and know one know what happened Harlem begins to think that Savior is like her parents, bad people that leave her every time the tough gets going, and then he comes out of jail and he saves her again and again and again, like a true savior.
Now Harlem has her dad Earl who raped her as a teenager and her real dad stuckey a major drug dealer who she doesn’t find out about until later on when she is trying to overcome chief. As a child Earl was very mean to her no matter the grades no matter what she did he wasn’t satisfied. Once when Harlem was little she moved earls hand from his face so he wasn’t mad and he said “You ever touch me again ill slap you silly”, and ever since then Harlem knew that her and earl would never have that father daughter relationship. Harlem met Stuckey when he was just getting out of jail and he came to visit chief, he demanded that chief give back the land of drug property that was his territory to sell. But he didn’t.
When Earl rapped Harlem she didn’t like him in the end when he went to rehab did a good job got left and then went to the hospital and was in a comma, Harlem went to go speak to him. Earl had asked about her and wanted to go see her badly. When she finally went she said her words and a couple days later when he died Harlem felt OK she wasn’t stressed or anything, but she wasn’t sad for his death. This shows that she can get over a dramatic event and move on and live her life to the fullest with savior by her side.
When Stuckey died in the shootout with Chief she was sad, she honestly loved him as a father even though the lifespan of time spent with Harlem between Earl and Stuckey is the same Stuckey had as much lasting effect. Stuckey offered Harlem a chance to give him a second chance and really raise him, but it didn’t happen and she was sad that she said No. That was one of her only things that she regretted doing.
So to analyze all four of Harlem’s relationship I can say even though she may start off bad, she ends of in a good note.Ha

 

2 Comments:

  1. Colin Forbes said...
    Monday, May 02, 2011  
    I feel like your essay did not make that much sense. i think you need to fix the spelling and grammar. Also, you explain the plot too much. i think you should pick another question to write about or add on with another one.
    vic xuan said...
    Monday, May 02, 2011  
    What personality(s) of Savior are you focusing on? Because, in the third paragraph, it is mostly about Harlem and her dad. Prioritize the character you are analyzing. Write about one character, or the relationship between two characters. I'd like to know more about the relationship between savior and Harlem, because, you have a quote that shows Savior leaving, only with the support of Harlem. (-pg39)

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