Bud, Not Buddy Literary Elements

Fiction; Children's Fiction

Great Depression (1936); Flint, Michigan

First person (Bud)

Tone: humorous, whimsical, earnest, hopeful, resilient

Mood: warm, cheerful, optimistic, silly

Pro: Bud Ant: Herman, to an extent; the Amoses

Will Bud find his father, whom he believes to be Herman Calloway?

Bud finally lays eyes on Herman in the club and points directly at him and announces that he is his father.

1. "The library door closing after I walked out was the exact kind of door Momma had told me about. I knew that since it had closed the next one was about to open" (Bud, 59)

1. John Dillinger (17): a notorious American gangster during the Great Depression
2. Br'er Rabbit (17): a famous trickster character in the Uncle Remus stories from the South
3. Paul Robeson (29): an African American singer and political activist
4. The Pinkertons (83): a private for-hire detective and security guard agency
5. George Washington Carver (119): a man born into slavery who became one of America's greatest botanists
6. John Brown (143): the infamous pre-Civil War white militant abolitionist executed for a failed slave uprising

1. Bud running away from the Home parallels his mother's own running away from home to live her own life.

1. "I do hope your conscience plagues you because you may have ruined things for many others" (Mrs. Amos, 15).
2. "There's another thing that's strange about the library, it seems like time flies when you're in one" (Bud, 90).