Rhetorical Analysis Of Edown At The Cross

James Baldwin argues that “such Frustrations, so long endured, is driving many strong, admirable men and women whose only crime is color

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

The idea of relating public and private events in Baldwin’s own experiences is instituted later in the essay in order to transition from narrative to analysis. Baldwin started telling a story about when he lived in New Jersey before the time of his father’s death. He talked about his personal treatment by white people in the south, a first hand account of the racism of that particular era. He learned of the hostility of the Jim Crow Laws inflicted on African Americans during that time period. His story was analogous to nearly all African Americans at that point. When Baldwin lived in New Jersey, he became exposed to the racism of the south that occurred in restaurants and diners. During one of those experiences he wrote, “I

In James Baldwin's letter to his nephew, written one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Baldwin emphasizes on the issue of segregation and the challenge to not earn acceptance from a white society. Baldwins purpose is to explain not only to his fifteen year old nephew, but all young people of color in the future generations that the real issue at hand is to find acceptance for white culture in themselves rather than seeking acceptance into white culture. Baldwin achieves this purpose by using Aristotle's appeal of ethos and  pathos. Baldwin used ethos as he adopts a passionate tone in order to represent his view and convince his nephew, his nephews generation and the future generations to come of his purpose. Baldwins passionate and confident tone is seen through his constant use or repetition and restatements of phrases in order to reinforce his statement. For example Baldwin uses anaphora to convince the audience of what he had seen and experienced due to the racism that exists in America, “I know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it and I know, which is much worse, and this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them. By repeating I know multiple times, further reinforces Baldwins concrete and passionate tone”. This leads and convinces his audience of his argument on acceptance. Baldwin then uses pathos to grab the audience's emotional attention in order to build an emotional agreement to Baldwin's purpose of acceptance. By using constant repetition of the word you throughout the letter, it is as if Baldwin is speaking

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

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.

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 Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin, Baldwin uses various stylistic devices and rhetorical strategies such as personification, and metaphors. Baldwin first uses personification in order to describe his father's death. In this, Baldwin state's “Death, however, sat as purposefully at my father's bedside as life stirred within my mother's womb.” Baldwin uses this personification of death in order to show how death consumed his father, becoming a stronger person than his father was during his demise. Furthermore, this can be seen as irony, as while Baldwin's father lay dying, new life was coming about, relating to a larger theme of death leading into new life. Further personification can be seen when Baldwin states that “There is not a Negro alive who does not have rage in his blood.” Through the personification of rage, it can be seen that like death, rage can overpower one’s mentality, creating a strength equal to, or more than that of a human. Baldwin also uses the metaphor of hatred being a chronic disease as it describes how deadly hatred can be, to the point of one's life being filled and ended with rage inside their body. Together, these stylistic devices and rhetorical strategies work together to affect the overall tone and meaning of the work as they display how despair and hatred must be fought in one's heart, for one to achieve acceptance, and equal power. Overall, these stylistic choices affect the audience’s reactions as they are able to identify the tone of

The first essay is about James Baldwin's personal perspective of being black in racist America. The second essay goes on to how religion and Christianity allowed the segregation and oppression of blacks to grow between both whites and blacks of the United States (Baldwin, 1963). Christianity in the United States can be easily be compared to the opiate of the masses. Religion controlled the lives of the whites and forced the blacks to live under the oppressive rule of the whites.

Baldwin began to resent his father and tried to break free of his influence; this is when he began preaching at Fireside Pentecostal Church. This was Baldwin’s first call to action he was leaving his known world for not only a new religion but also a new way of thinking. It was when he was a Pentecostal preacher he learned about the start of the Civil Rights movement. As Baldwin put it “I sat down at the counter ready to be served die trying…

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.

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

Soon, Baldwin would go to high school, a predominately Jewish school, and would become educated. Not long afterwards, Christianity would lose its favor for the young man. Once again the idea of color, and the inferiority of his color especially, were being thrown back in his face. He suddenly was faced with the knowledge that Whites wrote the Bible, and that Blacks were descendants of Ham, who was cursed by God. This Jewish viewpoint suddenly changed Baldwin's view on religion. He realized that his ."..fate had been sealed forever, from the beginning of time"(36). He realized that this was not only what Christiandom believed, but also the way it behaved(36).