“Good mornin,” Jim said, loud, but not too loud. There was no answer. “Good mornin to ya, cooter,” Jim said, a bit louder this t
ime. No answer again. “Well, I knew it,” said the slaveowner. “Dang you, Jim, you fooled with me one time too many!” And he raised his whip to thrash Jim as hard as he could.
Just then, they heard music, a fiddle playin nearby. And right there the cooter came climbin out of the pond. He walked on his back legs and he had that fiddle tucked up under his chin like any ole fiddler. He was playin away on it, too.
“Good mornin,” he said, and kept on playin. Then he commenced to sing:
“Jim, I told you you talk too much.
Run along and find you freedom place.”
Mebbe Jim did talk too much. But that was how he got his freedom.
—“Carrying the Running-Aways,”
Virginia Hamilton
How does the narrator’s viewpoint compare to the turtle’s in this passage?
The narrator and the turtle both agree that Jim talks too much.
The narrator and the turtle both wish that Jim would learn to play the fiddle.
The narrator and the turtle both love to play the fiddle for the plantation owner.
