![]() But it also could be to show us that we can do the same thing. ![]() Perhaps it's because he does see it as part of the larger story: the logical conclusion to Kunta's preservation of his ancestral history. So here's a good question, though-why does he include this part in the novel itself? Why wouldn't he just attach it as an epilogue? Reading it, it definitely feels more like an epilogue than a part of the main story arc, so Haley is definitely making a choice by including it. This is another huge revelation for him, as he is finally able to find the real people behind his grandparents' stories. Haley corroborates these stories with written records and other oral traditions given to him by a West African storyteller called a griot. ![]() These oral traditions become Alex Haley's personal Rosetta Stone: a "key that had unlocked a door into the past" (118.3). First, it establishes that the stories and words passed down from Kunta to Kizzy were treasured like heirlooms through the generations, supplemented with stories of other notable events over the years. This frames the novel in a super-unique way. ![]() That's a big "gotcha" to spring on the unsuspecting reader at the end of close to a thousand pages of Kinte fam history. In a Shyamalan -worthy twist, Roots reveals in its final chapters that the narrator has been Alex Haley, the great-great-great-great-grandson of Kunta Kinte, the whole time. ![]()
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