Use Of Irony In The Fourth Of July By Audre Lorde

The controversy surrounding race and racism has continued prosperous for years and will continue for years to come. However, racism has deeper implications than what appears on the surface. As shown in the literary works below, misrepresentation of minority populations and unfair judgment due to popular stereotypes instigate racism that can lead to conflicts in identity.

Throughout their lifetimes, individuals encounter a variety of challenges that test their resilience. Sometimes it targets a person’s personality, beliefs, race or culture. It can follow an individual throughout their life or stay in it for a period of time. However, with a strong personality and a determined goal, these obstacles can be conquered. An example of an obstacle that can be a battle in everyday life is prejudice, mostly against the different types of race. Racism is the false conviction that one race is more unrivaled than the other which isolated the world to what it is today. It is a part of human nature, and unfortunately, many people don’t know their limits when it comes to it. Some other individuals, however, have internal conflicts with themselves which, in some situations, limits them from the world.

The famous Japanese proverb and image of the three wise monkeys “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” is interpreted in the Western world as a refusal to acknowledge the evil that occurs around us. In the autobiography, The Fourth of July, by Audre Lorde, she describes an event in her life in which she experienced racism. Lorde’s parents made sure their kids were sheltered from the racism going on in the world and kept them from seeing it. Audre Lorde encounters racism even though her parents tried to hide it from her, which shows how being sheltered from issues in the world can cause greater problems when they are faced.

In July 2009, at a TED conference, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian author, gave a stunning speech about “the Danger of a Single Story”. In her speech, she mentioned about negative consequences happening when people tend to form stereotypes based on a single story, the one-sided argument. The single story blindfolds our eyes and prevents us from seeing the complexity, diversity, and similarities that construct our world, just as Adichie says “these negative stories is to flatten my experience and overlook the many other stories that formed me” (12:56). Listening to all her own personal experience and argument, I have become fully convinced and also see myself reflected in her stories. The single story can cause underlying and harmful impacts not only on personal issues but also on the global scale.

Furthermore, irony shows the contrasting effects of education by revealing how Douglas reacts to this concept of knowledge. One

Perhaps one of the most disgusting accusations one can receive today is “You’re racist!” However as disturbing as racism is, it is just one of the many mediums in which people use to control others. Whether the motive is race, religion, nationality, financial standing, or even gender, in every society, certain groups of people have always been oppressed. The culprit of seemingly unnecessary and ignorant oppression is human nature itself. Humans will always experience the need to feel superior, and for that reason, similar connections can be made among those people living under oppression thousands of miles and centuries apart from each other. “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” by Richard Wright, “Sweat” by Zora Neale

The ease of modern technology that lets people communicate globally, the access to extraordinary mobility, and the well roundedness of people today has produced the biggest population in history that prides itself in being egalitarian and fair-minded. Psychologists have found evidence in recent studies that, although people are not as outwardly racist and discriminatory as they were in the past centuries, there is an underlying bias that can lead people to act in ways opposing their beliefs. In their book Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good people, psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald explore the ideas of unconscious identity, the judgment and treatment of others based on stereotypes and the phenomenon of association, and our inability to simply stop being biased as opposed to outsmarting it.

An example of this is when members of the church were dreaming about going to war to see “the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, [and] the surrender” of war. This is irony because all of these things about war aren’t good things. Running into battle, sword fighting, gun-fire smoke, and losing the war itself are all the bad things that war brings to a culture. The people in the church are wishing to be soldiers and don’t comprehend what war actually does to a society. They only see the amazing things people talk about, and not the horrors it comes

When I was a senior in High School I completed a final project that prompted me to choose a literary work written by an individual with different life experiences than my own, write a research paper explaining the author’s background, and compare how this author’s environment influences their interpretation of the world versus my own. I went into the project believing it to be another time-waster activity that would finally secure my high grade in the course. Unknown to me, this project would catapult me to pursue a career of social justice.

It doesn’t take long to figure out that race and ethnicity issues continue to affect America - a quick glance at the news will show the latest riot, hate crime, or police brutality incident. This centuries old struggle has given rise to a number of literary works on the topic, many of which take a different approach to the issue. W.E.B. Du Bois, for instance, published the work The Souls of Black Folk in 1903, arguing for blacks’ right to equality in a horrifically segregated society. In these essays, Du Bois coined the term “double-consciousness,” wherein those with black skin must view the world both from their own perspective, and from the perspective of the predominately white society. The short story Recitatif by Toni Morrison explores this concept through the removal of the characters’ races, and the film Do the Right Thing, directed by Spike Lee, tells a story to demonstrate it. While the former shows double-consciousness through the usage of ambiguity, the latter almost directly references the concept. Taken together, these two sources argue a multi-faceted version double-consciousness, wherein society alienates the characters in ways that go beyond just the color of one’s skin.

The title itself can be considered an example of irony as the child that Desiree and Armand loved so much will be the cause of her disappearance and probable death. An example of irony can be observed in Desiree’s inability to notice that her son is not purely white, even though most of those who surround her seem to have noticed. The failure to recognise the physical appearance of the child will be the main reason of the feud that begins between Desiree and Armand. Not only the baby’s appearance is ironic, but the physical descriptions of Desiree and Armand are also examples of irony. Desiree, who is constantly associated with whiteness and godly providence will be accused of being of mixed race and seen by her husband as a punishment for

In her 2009 TED talks presentation,” The Danger of a Single Story,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explains how a single story presented by the media and books can affect the way a person may perceive others, places, and cultures (Adichie). She goes into details explaining her point through personal experiences where she falsely misunderstood someone based on a single word she heard numerously, and how she was a victim of a common stereotype. According to Adichie, there is never a single story and that people can go through a mental shift of their perspective if they considered various alternatives that differ from the same story that is commonly told.

The idea of double consciousness, termed by W.E.B. Du Bois, for African Americans deals with the notion that one’s self has duality in being black and American. It is the attempt to reconcile two cultures that make up the identity of black men and women. One can only see through the eyes of another. A veil exists in this idea, where one has limits in how he or she can see or be seen. This individual is invisible to the onlookers of the veil, and those onlookers may be invisible to the individual. This then alters how one can truly interpret their conscious. This concept is one that has been explored in various themes of literature,

In Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, the author exceedingly writes about the irony of life at Manderley. A life that is supposed to be perfect but turns out to be horrible. After meeting Maxim De Winter in Monte Carlo, a hotel in England, the narrator marries Maxim and together they go on a honeymoon. The innocent couple happily vacations there unbeknownst to the complicated future. As soon as they enter Manderley, the estate of Maxim, the narrator meets Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper and quickly understands that she is angry at her for taking Rebecca De Winter, Maxim’s late wife’s position.

In the former text, Potter develops a systematic account of the way versions are built as objective, as mere descriptions of actions or events. This addresses the question of how speakers manufacture the credibility of versions, and how this building can be challenged and undermined. Taking the example of attitudes again, this work considers the way in which versions can be produced to generate evaluations as features of the objects and events rather than positions or dispositions of speakers. This is clearly a key task when talk is about delicate or controversial topics, where motives and dispositions may be closely inspected. Thus constructing a version of a minority group that simultaneously produces negative characteristics (e.g. involvement with sexual violence) combined with a display of ‘sympathetic’ motivation toward that group (perhaps drawing on one of the culture repertoires discussed above) can work to avoid being seen as having racist attitudes. It should be noted the way the relationship between ‘mind’ and ‘the world’ is reworked here in the talk. One of the achievements of Discursive psychology has been to highlight how crucial this relationship as a practical feature of interaction. People construct versions of the world that have implications for their own disposition and thoughts;