Essay on Analyzing Notes of a Native Son

James Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son" demonstrates his complex and unique relationship with his father. Baldwin's relationship with his father is very similar to most father-son relationships but the effect of racial discrimination on the lives of both, (the father and the son) makes it distinctive. At the outset, Baldwin accepts the fact that his father was only trying to look out for him, but deep down, he cannot help but feel that his father was imposing his thoughts and experiences on him. Baldwin's depiction of his relationship with his father while he was alive is full of loathing and detest for him and his ideologies, but as he matures, he discovers his father in himself. His father's hatred in relation to the white American

Throughout his essay, Baldwin makes numerous use of italicize words or sentences to state a strong fact that he agrees with or deems important to readers. By italicizing that “Negroes want to be treated like men”, Baldwin clearly states his position. The extent, to which he uses this writing technique, signifies that he not only speaks for himself but also for his Community, Harlem. Aside from using italics Baldwin makes use of lengthy sentences, that are sustain with breaks such as hyphens and dashes, and a tone of sarcasm to affirm his position in the matter. He goes into hesitations when writing the lengthy sentences by including the dashes, which suggests that he is not only sustaining his position but also indicating that he has an experienced idea of what he is expressing. Baldwin`s degree of sarcasm in the opening paragraphs, is used to give an idea of how poorly their environment is but more over to show the insignificance that their environment has on others and their lack of attempt to “rehabilitate” it.

The turning point in the essay is when Baldwin states “Because if I am no what I’ve told I am, then it means that you’re not what you thought you were either! And that is the crisis.” By stating this it recognizes the faults in the education system, and leaves the audience intrigued wanting him to elaborate on his point. This statement also unfolds the truth about education which is “if you lie about one aspect of anybody’s history, you must lie about it all.”

On one hand James Baldwin is addressing his letter to his nephew, but on the other hand the text is also applicable to the entire black community who is oppressed by society; and to the whites who need to recognize the need for equality. Baldwin addresses the letter to the teenager, James, and additionally descriptively clarifies how this deadly situation applies to many dark-skinned men. Contrastingly, the novelist realizes how the privileged population will hear this message as well, which Baldwin makes clear when he metaphorically states, “I hear the chorus of the innocents screaming, ‘No! This is not true! How bitter you are!’”(Baldwin

Baldwin strategically uses the first, second, and third person to strengthen his message and instill a sense of responsibility in his audience. The first instance of this technique occurs when Baldwin uses the first person to recount “[his] first sight of New York” (Baldwin 125). About halfway through this description he transitions into the second person, substituting “you” for “I” and “me” to put his audience into his position of living in a society that “is rich” but in which “none of [it] is for you” (Baldwin 125). In the next two paragraphs he further transitions into the third person to show how this society instills in a person “an absolutely inarticulate and dangerous rage”, which causes them to become “a kind of criminal” because lawbreaking is a necessity in a society whose laws are not designed for your benefit or even your

Baldwin uses the experiences he faced in New Jersey and the personal relationship with his father to show ethos throughout his essay. At one point in his essay, Baldwin finds himself in New Jersey where segregation still exist. “I learned in New Jersey…one was never looked at but was simply at the mercy of the reflexes the color of one’s skin caused in other people” (68). Here Baldwin expresses how circumstances in New Jersey were like at the time, but also portrays the way people were viewed based on the color of their skin. Baldwin later goes on to mention the year he spent in New Jersey, was the year in which “[he] first contracted some dread, chronic disease” (70). This “disease” Baldwin contracted is not an actual disease, but more of a way in which he begins to feel and see the world around him differently. The disease Baldwin is referring to throughout his entire essay is bitterness. Living in New Jersey caused Baldwin to gain the sense of bitterness that his father had lived with during his life. Baldwin’s bitterness comes from the way he was specifically treated in New Jersey and how he allowed that feeling to affect his behaviors. Baldwin specifically mentions the moment in New Jersey where the white waitress approaches him at the restaurant stating, “We don’t serve Negroes here” (71). At this point we begin to see Baldwin as he acts out in violence by stating, “I wanted her to come close enough for me to get her neck

Here Baldwin connected the death and violence of the civil rights riots and his father’s death, to the destruction of pride in his father and himself. Baldwin admitted throughout the essay that he had hatred for his father. The ideas of hatred and apocalypse are repeated in this paragraph. The repetition of these evil words showed the relationship between the end of two worlds that affected Baldwin. Baldwin felt that his father left him with the world around him crumbling and his own world as well. Baldwin used the central idea of death to tie together the two ideas of the riots and his father’s death.

The events in life are ways of growth and development in a person’s life, family or a society. Over time, humans will know the mental, physical and spiritual changes as a result of experiences. These changes can make some broad similarities in life or make a difference to develop independence and make a lifestyle. In these essays: "Notes of a Native Son" by James Baldwin and "Three Spheres" by Lauren Slater are essays that give examples of events that are similar and different in characteristics that can occur in a person’s life in the growth stage.

The text continues with Baldwin warning his nephew about the struggle he is going to endure for just being born black and nothing else. Also telling him that he must survive for his children and his children’s children. He warns him, telling him that this country will set him up for failure and that they will try to control where he could go, what he could do, and how he could do it. He continues to articulate that he must stay true to himself because no matter how much he tries to resemble white people they will never accept him. He later states how corrupt the white mind is, for example, he says, “They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for so many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they

Baldwin determines that violence and racial separatism are not acceptable solutions for achieving “power”. Baldwin believes that black people will only be able to achieve lasting influence in America if they love and accept white people. In contrast, writing 52 years after Baldwin, Coats tells his own son to “struggle” but not

The passage reveals the difficult relationship which Baldwin had with his father. He says “When he died I had been away from home for a little over a year” (222). Baldwin had not been living with his father which caused them to become even more distant from each other. Also, on page 221 he says, “When he was dead I realized that I had hardly ever spoken to him” which shows that the two didn’t like to converse with each other. Baldwin also describes his father as “the most bitter man” and “indescribably cruel” (221). And he uses repetition of the word bitter throughout the essay. His description of his father shows that his father wasn’t a kind father which made their relationship challenging. And also shows that Baldwin had a negative image of his father. This negative image came from the resentment his father held towards people. Furthermore, Baldwin discloses how other family members reacted to his father’s death. He says, “The younger children felt, quite simply, relief that he would not be coming home anymore” (222) this reveals that the father’s death brought liberation for the family. They felt that they had been liberated from the hatred their father had towards whites. They felt

“Notes of a Native Son” is a narrative of Baldwin’s life. It is mainly about his relationship with his father and how after his father passed away he realized how his anger and rage, which was depicted as a disease, was

Personal stories and descriptions of major events are narrated throughout James Baldwin’s works as he analyzes the nature of the relationship between white and black America. The marriage of narration and analysis are especially evident in Baldwin’s essay, “Notes of a Native Son.” As Baldwin describes his father and their relationship until his father’s death, he simultaneously comments about the relationship between white and black America. Baldwin compares the events of his experience with concurrent American events to conclude about the nature of his personal relationships and the relationship between races; namely, that one must come to accept the

African Americans have to strive extremely hard to be successful and obtain a place in America. When reading Baldwin’s statement it seems much like Martin Luther King Jr. statement: “One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land”(3). African Americans are trying to obtain their place in American society but are restricted to the area that the white Americans set aside for them. Both Martin Luther King Jr. and James Baldwin are striving to make a difference to better America by publicly sharing their emotions.

Throughout the entire essay, Baldwin uses his circumstances to make you feel sympathy towards him as an author. In one part of his works he tells the awful account of his father’s mental illness. When telling the audience what he had went through, at the age of 19, someone reading this, might say that brings them sympathy, while his tone in passages where he explains these sad expressions are unattached. He writes, “…In the morning the telegram came saying he was dead. Then the house was full of relatives, friends, hysteria, and confusion…” Here, he plainly states the facts of how his house was after his father’s death but does not describe how he feels about the people being in his house or the emotional toll his father’s death has taken on him. This is just one aspect of