Sounder

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This article is about the book and film named "Sounder". For other uses, see Sounder (disambiguation).

**Title** **Sounder (the book)**

Author	William H. Armstrong
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Children's
Publisher	Harper & Row
Released	1969
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	116 pp
ISBN	NA

Sounder is a young adult novel by William H. Armstrong. It is the story of an African-American boy living with his sharecropper family in Depression-era Louisiana. Although the family's difficulties increase when the father is imprisoned, the boy still hungers for an education.

Sounder won the Newbery Award in 1970, and was made in to a major motion picture in 1972.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The main character, the family's eldest son, is called simply "the boy". His father is a sharecropper, and works hard for very little money. His mother tries hard to make the best out of what little food they have. The "Sounder" of the title is the father's devoted hunting dog, named for his beautiful voice.

One day, the boy smells something delicious cooking in the kitchen: a nice big piece of ham. The father, however, has stolen the ham, and soon afterward, the Sheriff arrives and arrests him for theft. As the sheriff drives away, Sounder chases after his car, and receives a shotgun blast in his face and side. The dog survives, but is permanently scarred and lamed.

When the boy visits his father in jail, the guards treat him unfairly. On Christmas, he brings a cake that his mother has baked, and the guard reduces it to "a box of crumbs" while looking for a file or weapon. After the boy passes the inspection, the guards let all the white guests bring whatever they want into the jail.

When the family hears that the father is being transferred to another jail in the South, they can no longer visit him because no one will tell them where he's been taken. The boy goes looking for his father's work crew, against his mother's objections. He does not find his father, but he sees a group of convicts working hard in the sun behind a fence. A guard throws iron at him, injuring his hands, but he escapes without further injury.

On the way home, the boy sees people throwing some books away and, since he's always wanted an education, he picks one up. He then sees students running out of a school building. A teacher at the school offers to let the boy live with him so he can attend the school and get an education.

He goes home and asks his mother for permission to go to school. Although this means even more work for her, she agrees. The boy spends about a year at the teacher’s house, with a couple of visits to his mother. Afterwards, he goes home for good. One day, old Sounder, who sleeps most of the time, comes to sudden life as a figure slowly approaches, dragging one side of his body. The boy's father has finally come home, released early after a terrible accident partially paralysed him. Soon after, the father and Sounder limp off into the woods together, and are later found dead.

Sounder (the movie)
original movie poster
Directed by	Martin Ritt
Produced by	Robert B. Radnitz
Written by	Lonne Elder III
Starring	Cicely Tyson Paul Winfield Kevin Hooks Carmen Mathews Taj Mahal Eric Hooks
Cinematography	John A. Alonzo
Distributed by	Twentieth Century-Fox
Release date(s)	1972
Running time	105 min
IMDb profile

[edit] Film

In 1972, Sounder was made into a film starring Cicely Tyson, Paul Winfield, Kevin Hooks, Carmen Mathews, Taj Mahal, and Eric Hooks. It was written by Lonne Elder III and directed by Martin Ritt.

It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Paul Winfield), Best Actress in a Leading Role (Cicely Tyson), Best Picture and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.

In 2003, ABC's Wonderful World of Disney aired a new film adaptation, reuniting two actors from the original. Kevin Hooks directed and Paul Winfield played the role of the teacher. (Winfield and Hooks played father and son, respectively, in the original version.)