ead. When they reach land, the ungrateful Heartfields accuse Mann of murdering Mr. Heartfield. Mann tries to escape, but is killed by the soldiers.
The theme of "Down by the Riverside" is that sometimes oppression can become so burdensome that it cannot be overcome. Mann, the main character, is a good person. He is a hardworking family man who owns his own farm. He has a religious background. Although poor, he is honest. When Bob steals the boat, Mann is the first one to protest that it was not the right thing to do. Despite these good qualities, Mann gets tangled in a situation that is so oppressive it ends in tragedy: "It just did not seem fair that one man should be hit so hard and on so many sides at once" (55).
From my point of view, "Down by the Riverside" helped me to understand the black experience more and how it relates to the immigrant experience. Some immigrants came to the United States as refugees. Life in their country was oppressive, to some extent like life in the South durin
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