Clover's Change in the World

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Mahatma Gandhi once advised, “Be the change that you want to see in the world.” This is easy to say, yet difficult to do. However, there are people who epitomize this saying both in life and characters who demonstrate this in literature. Jacqueline Woodson’s children’s book, The Other Side, introduces us to one such character. Clover, an African American child who lives in a segregated town, notices a white girl named Annie sitting on a fence that separates the black side of town from the white side of town one summer day. Clover realizes that society is not always right, and that she can begin to change the world by bravely sitting on top of the symbolic fence. A study of Clover, the narrator of The Other Side, illustrates that one person can change the world. At first, Clover stays to one side of the fence that separates the white side and the black side of town. She watches Annie from afar, abiding by her mother’s rules: “Don’t climb over that fence when you play.” She stays far away from the fence as she watches the girl in the pink sweater climb up on the fence. Clover wonders why everyone and everything in their town is separated. When she asks her mother why everything on the other side of the fence seems so far away, her mother replies, “Because that’s the way things have always been.” Clover does not argue with her mother, but continues to wonder about the separation that occurs in her town. The reader starts to notice a change in Clover when Annie asks Clover and some of her friends if she could play jump rope with them. Clover’s friend, Sandra, answers, “no,” for the group without even asking them, but Clover wonders what she would have said. Clover thinks, “I don’t know what I would have said. Maybe yes. Maybe no.” Clover continues to watch Annie from her dry bedroom for the remainder of the rainy summer, until one day it stops

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