Notes to a Native Son

Baldwin’s bitterness and anger comes from experiencing and growing up with his father who had suffered from a mental health problem such as paranoid delusions about white people. Racism can cause a person to have a self-destructive relationship with the world. Everywhere you go you see people with a different skin tone, and walking around seeing nothing but hatred can weigh heavily on someone’s mind. Not only does it affect said person, but the others around them. For instance, Baldwin releases a fit of rage against a waitress who was just following her bosses’ orders. In “Notes of a Native Son”, Baldwin says, “I felt that if I had to do something with my hands. I wanted her to come close enough for me to get her neck between my hands.” In his anger, he throws an empty coffee mug at her. This is something that he saw in his father as despicable, his father’s influence was stronger than he thought it was. James never thought

The white world had shut the door on him and he finally conceded the burden of being black. Baldwin affirms, "I had discovered the weight of the white people in the world" (222). Baldwin realized that his father was not trying to pass along his racist beliefs. He was simply trying to save them from the agonizing conduct of the whites towards them. He found the reason behind the bitterness in his father. Baldwin also became aware that the bitterness, which he had once hated in his father, was now a part of him "The bitterness which had helped to kill my father could also kill me" (222). Baldwin did not want live a lonely life; the fear of becoming, what his father once was, dwelled in Baldwin. He realized that he had to free himself of the bitterness, before the bitterness distanced him from his family (like it had, for his father).

Baldwin gives a vivid sketch of the depressing conditions he grew up on in Fifth Avenue, Uptown by using strong descriptive words. He makes use of such word choices in his beginning sentences when he reflects back to his house which is now replaced by housing projects and “one of those stunted city trees is

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.”

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

2) In paragraph 5, summarize how Baldwin describes the relationship between blacks and whites. Specifically, look at the metaphor of the universe. What is the cost of these racial politics for whites? And for blacks?

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

James Baldwin in “Notes of a Native Son” writes about the death of his father and his struggle in America during segregation. He also reveals that he didn’t have a very good relationship with his ill father. Throughout the essay there is a repetition of bitterness. Also, Baldwin’s experiences reveal his purpose for writing the essay. One passage that is especially revealing is on page 222 which says, “When he died I had been away from home for a little over a year. In that year I had had time to become aware of the meaning of all my father’s bitter warnings, had discovered the secret of his proudly pursed lips and rigid carriage: I had discovered the weight of white people in the world. I saw that this had been for my ancestors and now would be for me an awful thing to live with and that the bitterness which had helped to kill my father could also kill me.” This passage reveals how Baldwin’s relationship with his father, and his father’s warnings help demonstrate how hatred can cause negative effects on African Americans.

“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

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.

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.

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 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

Miller states, “For him, a ‘good writer’ was a writer who was not content to pander to public taste or fame” (96-97). Even though he was under appreciated during his lifetime, he still fulfilled his goal of becoming an author. Today, he is greatly appreciated, his artistic style is exceptional. According to Miller, “Baldwin could not win in the eyes of his critics during his lifetime: he was trapped by the racial context for his writing and judged expectations, vacillating between strictly aesthetic and the strictly political, that were very much the products of a turbulent time. Baldwin found himself inhabiting neither place rather than both (104). Although he was neglected by critics during his lifetime, his works are being studied today because scholars have realized that they undermined his artistic abilities. Miller explains,“Baldwin’s previously neglected works, resulting in a work that represents the culmination of the recent trends in Baldwin studies. These works together indicate a willingness to read Baldwin thoroughly, to shed light on some of the works that had been critically dismissed, and to explore a plurality of contexts in order to recognize fully the accomplishments of this complex writer”(108). It’s wonderful that scholars are now more appreciative towards Baldwin’s work. According to Field, “Since 2001, nearly two hundred scholarly studies of Baldwin have appeared…” (1148). He deserves all the

When he first came, he heard people call him by his skin color, not as a racial slur but just a description. Like the officer, Baldwin felt bitterness and anger, for the word does not have a light history for him and his ancestors. But he reminds himself that these people are isolated, they aren’t the people who committed the actions of slavery and segregation. They are just people who were awed by a person with different appearance. Baldwin simply expected them to have the same resentment, the same hate, the same disgusting thoughts those in America have had. But they didn’t. But he couldn’t let it go just like the officer. He was marked with a bad historical background. Both have something that wasn’t created by them, a resentment, a bias that was made long before they were born. Hatred and anger seems to be implanted in their minds, but not in their personality. When Baldwin and the officer had the opportunity to lash out, both had internal struggle whether it was their personal issues, or a historical one. Issues of years of mistreatment by other cultures. Their place in society has crafted a negative experience in both, to be hated and to