The Freedom Writers

Students

Eva Benitez

            Eva is a young 14 year old Mexican-American with a cocky Latin-American accent.  She witnessed the death of her friend and the imprisonment of her father; became a victim of bullying and years later joined in a gang. I believe these have strong influence on the way she speaks.

Marcus

            His friend who was sitting next to him on a bench in a park accidentally shot himself.  Since no one alive was there but him, a black guy at that, Marcus was blamed for it and was taken into a juvenile hall. He was traumatized from his bad experiences and trusts nobody. He despises white people because of the discrimination he had experienced in the past. These affect how he speaks. He has the ghetto accent.

Ben Daniels

            Ben is a white quiet American student with an American accent seated at the front in the beginning of the film.

Teachers

The teachers used their authority and spoke proudly, but Ms. Gruwell was different. She talked to her students in a much more approachable way.

Ms. Erin Gruwell

Ms. Gruwell was very excited for her first day of teaching in Woodrow Wilson High School. Although it wasn't the best experience, she never gave up on her students. She was persistent and always came up with ideas on how she could make her class as enjoyable for them as possible and how to gain their trust and respect. She tried a different approach. One example is the line game in which she asks a question, and when the question applies to them, they are to step on either side of the line. This was a successful activity as she effectively got her students to participate. She even went out of her way to buy journals for them to write whatever they want. She worked two additional jobs to finance the journals. Together with her dad, they fetched her students and drove to a museum dedicated for the Holocaust. This is the turning point where the characters had begun to develop their personal selves.

The place was a gang infested community, so naturally students were brutal and used violence to boost their power. An example is when Eva let her gang members inside the school premises and caused chaos between her gang and fellow schoolmates. No one found out it was her who caused trouble, and even if someone finds out, he/she wouldn’t dare tell because of fear of getting caught and killed.