God Bless the Child
... as Rosie, her mother, Queenie, and her grandmother. Neither woman had opportunities to improve their lives. All three women were stuck in dead-end jobs with no chances to excel. For the majority of African-Americans, the 50s were not an enjoyable decade. Like Rosie, Queenie, and her grandmother, there were no careers with opportunities for advancement. Life, therefore, was not easy, as the setting of God Bless the Child described. Work was about making enough money to get by. Work was necessary, and many took whatever job they could get. Despite Rosie's best efforts to live a lavish lifestyle, there were no opportunities for the average working black American to indulge in items such as silk robes and crystal bowls. Kristin Hunter attempted to convey the this idea by using the setting as a way of recreating urban city life in the 50s to the reader. Life in Chicago in the 1950s was not easy for any black American. Rosie lived in a dilapidated apartment, which was thoroughly infested with roaches. The setting in which Rosie was exposed to was important in the novel God Bless the Child. Rosie is exposed to repulsive conditions, such as broken walls, roaches, and a mother whose attention she rarely receives. Rosie is motivated by these conditions and later strives to become successful; unfortunately, the harsh conditions in which she was raised also affected her personality, and also influenced the person she would later become. After residing in such grotesque conditions as those in which she lived, Rosie became tough and abrasive. She worked herself to the bone and stopped for no one. Rosie also used her tough and abrasive manner when dealing with friends. She loved her friends dearly, yet she also tended to push them away. She never let anyone, including Larnie Bell and Dolly, who were her two best friends, become too close to her. The manner in which she treated her friends almost seemed to portray that Rosie was afraid to become too attached to anyone because any friendship they might have could possibly be taken away. The rough environment to which she was exposed is one the prime factors which influences Rosie's outlook on life. Because Rosie grew up in a bad neighborhood and a poor family, she never had many of her own things; therefore, when she fin...