The Man Who Killed A Shadow By Richard Wright

Black people still call America their home, even though they are consistently discriminated against. Consistently hated on because of how they look like. Black people have been viewed as trouble, suspicious, no good, and will never be anything respectable (Goldberg 2). When young black children cannot be protected from this everyday, so they adapted to this way of life and was to never believe otherwise. Racism and discrimination limit not only black people, but everyone of color. People of color believe they will never be like a white man because of all the advantages a white man has. However, people like Benjamin Banneker, Kenneth Clark, and Toni Morrison are showing their skin color does not relate to their success or intelligence (Goldberg 3). These people are showing how even with all the injustice in America, they were still able to be successful. It is not about what the color of one’s skin is, it is about the mindset and perspective of each

From the confrontations he has within the Residential School, he is triggered to stay strong and make sure that others do not belittle him. When Saul is later introduced to hockey, finding his passion he also faces the adversities of racism which hurt him both externally and internally, nevertheless he realizes what all this has done to him and so he choses to change his identity and build up as a strong person once again. In the end, all the adversities he faces come out as a lesson and prove him as a wise man, who has learned his true

A famous short story, “The Quiet Man,” by Maurice Walsh, tells the tale of the protagonist, Shawn Kelvin, who must come to a resolution both internally and externally throughout the story. Shawn experiences a rollercoaster of up and downs during the story, around the 1950’s in Ireland. Shawn finds the women of his dreams and he marries her, but her brother, Big Liam O’Grady, is the man of the town. Traditionally, dowry is given from the bride’s family to the groom's family. Shawn has no respect from Big Liam O’Grady, or the town. Shawn wants to receive his respect from Big Liam O’Grady and love from Ellen. Shawn is willing to do anything for her, even it comes down to a fight. Shawn fights himself and others, internally and externally, to

Imagine a person being labeled as inferior because of a complexion they cannot control. African Americans have been treated unfairly solely because of the color of their skin throughout history. The idea behind this is what is defined as colorism, which is the prejudice or discrimination against individual with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic group (Oxford Dictionary). Colorism has been prominent throughout history, allowing discrimination and hatred towards people with darker skin, more specifically African Americans. In a world filled with racism, prejudice, discrimination, colorism is another factor that has similar effects when it comes to the treatment of African Americans. Martin Luther Kings Jr.’s, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man both connect to the role that colorism plays in the lives of African Americans. Martin Luther King’s letter explicitly explains how society influences colorism and how it creates injustices. Ellison’s novel gives further insight on the more psychological and personal affect colorism has on Black people by using lots of symbolism in the novel throughout the novel to portray it. Constantly being put down because of how dark someone is will eventually lower an individual’s confidence, knowing that they will miss out on opportunities simply because they have darker skin. Colorism negatively affects how people treat African Americans and also how African Americans feel about themselves.

The term genocide means terminate an entire race or group. In the Holocaust, millions of people were murdered by the Nazis under the order of Adolf Hitler. The main target during the Holocaust were Jewish people, or more specifically those who did not fit into the Aryan race (Adolf Hitler’s picture of how a person should be). Adolf Hitler and his army the Nazis tried to commit genocide by eradicating the Jewish race, but luckily they were not successful in doing so. The story “Terrible Things” by Eve Bunting and the poem “The Hangman” by Maurice Ogden show in very different ways a lot of the same themes about the Holocaust.

Flexibility allows both protagonists to find out about their negative aspects. Saul states, “It’s funny how bartenders always tell you to drink up” (Wagamese, 189). This is evident since Saul uses alcohol to relieve the stress and conflict that he tries to endure in his life. Saul states, "What I let them see was

The Long Shadow is a book written by three research sociologists; Karl Alexander, Doris R. Entwisle, and Linda Olson. Karl Alexander is John Dewey Professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at the John Hopkins University. The late Doris R. Entwisle was a research professor of Sociology at the John Hopkins University. Linda Olson is an associate research scientist with the Baltimore Education Research Consortium (BERC) and the Center for Social Organization of Schools at the John Hopkins University. This book was originally published on April 14, 2014 and in this book, these professors followed the lives of 790 children growing up in various neighborhoods throughout Baltimore, Maryland. I would consider this book a case study because it took over twenty-five years of research, interviews and surveys to finally get it done and then later on published. The three main subjects researched in this book are a family’s background, disadvantaged urban youth, and the transition to adulthood. And in this paper, I will present my central findings of this book.

Foremost, after Saul decides to quit his forestry job, he opts to leave Manitouwadge and look elsewhere for work. Saul is able to find jobs as he mentions that “Medicine Hat. Fort Chipewyan. Wabasca. Skookum-chuck. Tagish Lake. I worked in all those places and more.” (179). Nonetheless, Saul is unable to hold down a job because he cannot focus due to the abuse he suffered in the past. He is never consistent with his career and keeps changing with every new location he resides. Additionally, Saul mentions that “Whenever the stories and the invented histories started to unravel, I’d move on to a new crowd…” (181). He is not able support himself as a person as he is incapable of facing what happened in his past. Whenever his past caught up to him, Saul is reminded of had happened to him; something he wants to forget consequently, Saul struggles with moving on as any human would. Not only is Saul unable to focus on his job, he states that “A part of me missed the banter of the bench and the dressing room…So I began to eat lunch and supper in beverage rooms and taverns…” (180). Since Saul is not able to fill the feeling of something being empty, he tries to push everything away by spending as much time as possible in scenes such as taverns. Moreover, his frequent visits to pubs, further aggravates his incapability to focus on his life. After spending much of his time in taverns, Saul remarks that “I’m not sure when I began to drink myself. I only know that when I did the roaring in my belly calmed. In alcohol I found an antidote…” (180). The drinking habit Saul develops aids him temporarily by filling the vacuum in his life. Drinking took over his life and he used it as means of escaping from reality. Saul continuously tries to escape from reality and immerses himself in activities that will allow him to not acknowledge his pain and

Howard Thurman removes the window dressing in the African American experience of segregation in America. Thurman in his book, “The Luminous Darkness” paints an obscure portrait that delved deep into the consciousness of Black men, women and children freshly freed from chattel slavery. Two hundred years of slavery and one hundred years of darkness seeping into each soul perpetuated by an evil explained only through the Word of God. Although this book was published in the 60’s, the stigma segregation continues resonate in the souls of those who remember and perhaps even in the souls of those who do not.

James Baldwin’s short story gruesomely paints the picture of how racism and sexuality are linked. The story takes place during the civil rights movement in the United States (Gorman 119). During this time, African Americans were still being oppressed, and white people were angry that they were making progress in society. This often lead to brutal attacks and sometimes death. In the story, the narrator, Jesse, is having difficulty having sex with his wife and compares her to the black women that he has sex with. As the story progresses, the problem emerges with the killing of a black man who is dismembered by a white man right before young Jesse’s eyes. Instead of seeing this as a horrible experience, Jesse takes on the attitude of those around him. Through characterization, point of view, and symbolism, James Baldwin’s story, “Going to Meet the Man,” demonstrates the connection between sexuality, particularly masculinity, and racism.

The world today can be described as a revolving planet, constantly changing for better or for worse. To this day, many people who make mistakes are able to gain a second chance, redeeming themselves, but a few are unfortunately born with a despicable nature that tends to cause more harm than good. The world has many problems, starting with the two different sides it is structured with. One side, full of happiness and humor, feeds off of the other, dark and mysterious side. In many people’s minds the people living on the bright side, typically white, inevitably push the dark side, full of blacks, into the pit of darkness that lies directly beneath their own feet. In the essay Just Walk on By, this kind of darkness is experienced by Brent Staples, a black man, who has experienced emotions varying from sadness to utter

My analysis of W. E. B. Du Bois’s story is that he stood up to people for what he believed in and used his experiences to become one of the founding members of the NAACP. Reading Du Bois’s story, made me realize how easy it is to leave out facts and change point of views to how the writer wants you to perceive it. My analysis of Richard Wright’s story is that being a target of racism, he tried to be the bigger person by trying to get along with white people, even going to such lengths as leaving a job in order to keep from getting hurt. I believe that Richard Wright overcame his discrimination and mistreatment by using his experiences to become a writer. Instead of letting it beat him down, he learned from these experiences and made them a profession for him. My analysis of Gunnar Myrdal’s story is that he didn’t look at racism as a man’s color point of view, but more of a number and group’s point of view. His point of view, to me, was more of an opinion about how white people wanted majority over black people. He didn’t know firsthand what it was like for a Negro during that time, he was more trying to scientifically explain Negroes experiences. I have always felt that people should not discriminate or treat someone differently just because of the color of the person’s skin.

Ghostly representations of “the other” imagine a social evil that has not been put to rest. These images reoccur in the Western canon, marking the persistence of slavery long after its abolition. Haunting, ghosts and skeletons in Benito Cereno act as a vehicle through which the suppressed return to the stage with a message. The ghosts carry with them all that the imperialists wanted to control, including emotions, and more precisely, the emotions of the oppressed. I argue that ghosts and skeletons comprise an area of tension in which the appearance of the “other” reveals that the dominant party’s control is incomplete. Yet, the presence is merely ghostly due to the constant policing and lack of respect for the Other. These ghosts also break through the boundaries of the dominant culture’s paradigms and identities (Harpham 17), signaling potential political crisis. This text signals the fear of the retaliation of the Other through ghostly representations by projecting on to the other, their own identities of brutality and irrationality. “Benito Cereno” by Herman Melville overturns the racist images of the colonized by relocating evil in the order of slavery. Hauntings carry the perspectives and powers of the slaves by preserving the dead amidst the living and the past amidst the present, they muddle up the concept of time and therefore defy the Western dream of complete control.

James Baldwin, an African American author born in Harlem, was raised by his violent step-father, David. His father was a lay preacher who hated whites and felt that all whites would be judged as they deserve by a vengeful God. Usually, the father's anger was directed toward his son through violence. Baldwin's history, in part, aids him in his insight of racism within the family. He understands that racists are not born, but rather racist attitudes and behaviors are learned in the early stages of childhood. Baldwin's Going to Meet the Man is a perfect example of his capability to analyze the growth of a innocent child to a racist.

The novel "The Blind Assassin" by Margaret Atwood is a short story about Iris Chase Griffen and how she starts writing the story of her life for her granddaughter during the time of World War I. She tells the story with scenes from her present life as well as many flashbacks throughout her life. In the story, the protagonist, Iris Chase Griffen, has difficulty with the death of her sister, her unhappy marriage to her husband and her affair with Alex. During the story, she encounters her sister’s journals and ultimately learns that her husband, Richard was raping her sister Laura. Literature is to be known to have an emotional impact on the reader and this novel by Margaret Atwood is no different. There are several conflicts in this work, and they all help to convey themes of human nature vs. society and herself.