James Baldwin's Stranger in the Village
In paragraph three of James Baldwin's 'Stranger in the Village' (1955), he alludes to emotions that are significant, dealing with conflicts that arise in the Swiss village. Of these emotions are two, astonishment and outrage, which represent the relevant feelings of Baldwin, an American black man. These two emotions, for Baldwin's ancestors, create arguments about the 'Negro' and their rights to be considered 'human beings' (Baldwin 131). Baldwin, an American Negro, feels undeniable rage toward the village because of the misconception of his complexion, a misconception that denies Baldwin human credibility and allows him to be perceived as a 'living wonder' (129).
Baldwin and his
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There is no intelligence and no forgiveness behind the outrage of a slave?s ancestor, which is what Baldwin refuses to let the reader forget.
Baldwin gives the impression that no white man has ever had to walk a mile in a black man?s shoes. While the Negro was getting shipped to America without a pot to piss in, the white man remained hiding behind beliefs in ?white supremacy? (Baldwin 133). The concept of white supremacy has separated two different races for years. For Americans, whose heritage came from Europe, acceptance of the Negro was not considered due to the ?jeopardy? it could cause among their status as men (Baldwin 133). Baldwin knows his rage must have limitations so he begins to question how this type of ignorance could have evolved. Baldwin tries to associate this stupid form of hate with the Swiss village but cannot because he feels that the villagers remain innocent by their ignorance to anything that does not affect them, in their village, directly.
In spite of Baldwin?s sympathetic response to the villagers, there is no sympathy toward the white man?s ideas of religion. I believe Baldwin feels that these religious villagers, who have preached about God for years, are simply hypocrites. How could these vague white supremacists believe in the same religion as Baldwin and his ancestors when the Negro supposedly used to be ?identified with the devil? (Baldwin 134)? So the suppressed Negro must
James Baldwin argues that “such Frustrations, so long endured, is driving many strong, admirable men and women whose only crime is color
Baldwin first uses pathos to describe his experiences when walking through the streets of the small Switzerland village the first time. He states, “I remain as much a stranger today as I was the first day I arrived, and the children shout Neger! Neger! as I walk along the streets” (252). Baldwin later on describes how shocked he was at the children for saying this but then realizing that they are too sheltered to understand what they said means. Baldwin describes his reaction, “I knew that they did not mean to be unkind.. The children who shout Neger! Neger! have no way of knowing the echoes this sound raises in me” (253). Baldwin seem to allow these racist words from the kids because of their
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
There are some things to what Baldwin said that aren't very accurate. By this I mean that some of the thought he expressed aren't relevant to our society today. This essay was written in the fifty's, a lot of chaos and anarchy was prevalent. This being said, it makes sense that Baldwin wrote: "American white men still nourish the illusion that there is some means of recovering the European innocence, of returning to the state in which black men do not exist people who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction." (pg 101). The point I'm trying to make is that Baldwin was in a more violent mind state toward American life at this time. The Civil Right Movement slowly started in 1955 then gained speed with Rosa parks and what really sparked the movement came from one speech. Martin Luther King gave his I Have a Dream speech in
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.
Whether past or present, there is no denying the fact that we humans have created an existence in which it is not uncommon to subject other breathing human beings to conditions of separateness and extreme oppression. The societies we create aid in participation of these conditions in a way that some deem acceptable, even if threatening to the moral norm. “Going to Meet The Man,” a melancholy story written by James Baldwin, sheds light on the tragic problem of racism that has afflicted our world and how this racism came to be. By examining the past and present life of a racist sheriff in a southern town, this tragic story epitomizes the terrible truth of reality and exemplifies the tragedy and problem of moral knowledge, alienation from others, and the tragedy of morally conflicting demands.
Baldwin describes the whites as believing the blacks are inferior to them and that the white presumptions of black people have defined the place of blacks in society for many years. He states that “[his nephew was] born into a
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
Baldwin, however, describes his father as being a very black-like “African tribal chieftain” (64) who was proud of his heritage despite the chains it locked upon him. He is shown to be one with good intentions, but one who never achieved the positive outcome intended. His ultimate downfall was his paranoia such that “the disease of his mind allowed the disease of his body to destroy him” (66). Baldwin relates the story of a white teacher with good intentions and his father’s objection to her involvement in their lives because of his lack of trust for any white woman. His father’s paranoia even extended to Baldwin’s white high school friends. These friends, although they could be kind, “would do anything to keep a Negro down” (68), and they believed that the “best thing to do was to have as little to do with them as possible” (68). Thus, Baldwin leaves the reader with the image of his father as an unreasonable man who struggled to blockade white America from his life and the lives of his children to the greatest extent of his power. Baldwin then turns his story to focus on his own experience in the world his father loathed and on his realization that he was very much like his father.
In paragraph 10, Baldwin describes the feeling of rage explicitly. He explains that ?rage? is unavoidable and that one cannot ignore it. The rage of people caught in situations, as Baldwin puts it in the epigraph that frames this essay, causes ?rage? on an everyday basis but still cannot be fully comprehended. The rage of the American Negro can only partially be rationalized by the white people with complications and ?never entirely? subdued by the American Negro. This powerful anger cannot be concealed or disguised because it would become deceitful and invigorate ?rage? and add to its unpleasantness (130-131). Additionally, rage is by far the strongest emotion one can experience, especially if repressed. For instance, Baldwin had a lot of anger and hostility built inside of him because of his troubled past and agitated feelings. These feelings grow inside of Baldwin because he cannot fit into a society that accepts him as an ?exotic rarity? (131), not a human being.
Baldwin continues on and says that blacks were being oppressed everywhere. “…Negro girls who set upon a white girl in the subway because…she was stepping on their toes. Indeed she was, all over the nation” (73). Not only does this portray the ever growing tension felt among African Americans in a certain area, it expresses the tension felt across the nation. African Americans everywhere were still continuously looked down upon, causing agitation, which was the current social condition blacks and whites faced.
Baldwin opens his argument acknowledging the distortion of segregation for the segregationists. According to Baldwin, people who, since birth, have been taught to think a certain way towards the African American race. “The white South African or Mississippi sharecropper or Alabama sheriff has at bottom a system of reality which compels them really to believe when they face the Negro that this
It is obvious from the story and the historical period in which the story takes place that Jesse had grown up in an extremely racist society and experienced prejudice on a daily basis from the attitude that his father expresses toward the black race. Here, Baldwin shows how any person in any situation can become the victim of twisted family values and societal expectations. Baldwin combines attacks on black people during the civil rights era and the period of history to this story to allow the reader to understand what Jesse feels on the day his innocence and perception of race was no more. “The black body was on the ground, the head was caved in, one eye was torn out one ear was hanging. But one had to look carefully to realize this, for it was, now, merely, a black charred object on the black, charred ground.”
The second portion of the memoir is recounted through flashback, where Baldwin draws parallels between his father’s life and his own. At some points, Baldwin is conscious of the similarities he shares with his domineering father, such as “the vice of stubborn pride.” He also recognizes the unfortunate inheritance of his father’s “intolerable bitterness of spirit”. However, Baldwin has moments where his rage seems to blind him to the personal characteristics he and his father share. He establishes the extended metaphor of his father’s hatred as a “disease of the mind”. Partly because he never divulges his negative racial experiences to his son,