Which key words in notes of a native son does baldwin use to convey the oppressive condition of his father’s life due to racial prejudice?

When violence and hatred ruptures the course of our lives, we have a tendency to tell ourselves stories in order to make it easier to swallow. Given scrambled pieces of evidence, we arrange them like puzzle pieces… into a narrative. We take hatred and meaningless prejudice and we refuse to let it shape our identity. We simply just loop it in with all the other things that happen in our lives, like beads of a necklace on a string… but sometimes that isn’t possible.

Sometimes hatred can be rooted so deep that it seems like there’s no moving past it. It becomes an immovable object standing in the way of acceptance and closure. That immovable object was the world that James Baldwin was born into. The hatred that Baldwin tried to understand and grapple with when writing “Notes of a Native Son” was racism. It was bigotry and it was a truly horrible ignorance. I like to think that writing about the alienation that this caused him helped to soothe some of the pain that it created, but that is a naively optimistic sentiment.

In order to really understand the alienation of James Baldwin and where the deadly roots of that problem came from, I think it’s necessary to understand the essay as a whole first. “Notes of a Native Son” was an autobiographical essay James Baldwin wrote on the relationship between him and his step-father, which he wrote 12 years after his father’s death. The essay begins with the passing of Baldwin’s father in 1943. The funeral was held on Baldwin’s birthday, the same day a race riot broke out in Harlem.

Baldwin’s father was a preacher and a difficult man with a harsh temper who had difficulty connecting with others (that included his son). He died after contracting tuberculosis and refusing food, which he was convinced had been poisoned.

Baldwin recalls when he was young, one of his teachers, a white woman, had taken an interest in him and supported both him and his family; however, Baldwin’s father was resistant to this arrangement, citing a lack of trust in the teacher and her intentions. This initially confused the young Baldwin but as he grew up he gained a certain understanding of the reasoning behind these actions.

While visiting his father at the height of his illness, Baldwin again realized that he had been holding onto hatred of his father in order to avoid confronting the pain of losing him. At the funeral for his father, Baldwin was alienated from his father and really, from the process of mourning him… He had no suitable clothes for the funeral, he distrusted the preacher that was leading the funeral, and was even reluctant to see his father in his casket.

After the funeral, the riots in Harlem began, and Baldwin’s reflection and mourning had to be cut short. His thoughts drifted away from his father and towards his city. At this point in his essay, Baldwin’s reflective writing made me question why grief seemed to be the providence of youth. I’d imagine that age deepens all feelings. Including grief. And that for Baldwin, writing about his father’s death many years after the fact must have been a painful memory to dig up. Nevertheless, Baldwin wasn’t worried about these things, he was worried about the state of Harlem, his city.

Anger and resentment seeped into the city that molded Baldwin. In “Notes of a Native Son” Baldwin describes Harlem as, violently still. He described it as a city waiting for a climactic event but also wanting an answer or solution to this bigotry and hatred that continually tore at the fabric of the city. “All of Harlem,” Baldwin wrote, “seemed to be infected by waiting”.

Ultimately, James Baldwin explores the bitterness he had toward his father in hindsight, as a man who had experienced some of the same awful situations that his father had. It gave Baldwin an almost depressive clarity. He had grown up afraid of his father and felt he was senile… or possibly even crazy, but as he grew up Baldwin began to understand that his father simply wanted to protect him and his other siblings from the world that surrounded them and threatened to cave in on them if they weren’t careful.

Baldwin explained it best, saying: “When he died I had been away from home for a little over a year. In that year I 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.”

The weight of white people in the world… What a devastating weight that James Baldwin had to shoulder, constantly threatening to crush his spirit. The same weight that caused his father to be withdrawn and hateful character in his life. The “proudly pursed lips and rigid carriage” that came with carrying the knowledge of what people are capable of when they shed your idea of humanity.

In Baldwin’s case, the seeds of hatred began to show themselves after he had left his father’s home as a young man, striking out to New Jersey to work in a factory and instead he was hit with the full force of blatant racially-motivated prejudice for the crime of being born black.  

Which best explains the excerpt's role in the problem-and-solution structure of the passage? The excerpt presents the solution to a minor problem in the passage. The excerpt sets up a secondary problem to be addressed by the passage. The excerpt presents the solution to the overarching problem in the passage.

Which best explains Baldwin's choice to use the word?

Which best explains Baldwin's choice to use the word "unquiet" instead of "loud" to describe the streets of Harlem after the race riot? Baldwin is describing the feeling of restlessness and tension in the area as opposed to actual sounds. ... The bitterness that results from racial prejudice threatens his existence.

Which keywords words in native son does Baldwin use to convey the oppressive condition of his father life due to racial prejudice?

In his novel “Notes of a native Son” Baldwin uses the key words:buried, weight, tension, bleak to convey the oppressive condition of his father's life due to racial prejudice.

Which figurative language device does Baldwin use to emphasize his father's frequent lack of control over his intense anger he uses the personification at the mercy of his pride he uses the alliteration conveyed by his carriage?

The figurative device that Baldwin uses to emphasize the rage buried beneath his father's outward appearance and actions is: The paradox “vindictively polite.”

Which best describes the effect that racial prejudice has on Baldwin's father?

Answer: C: Baldwin's father viewed himself in terms of pride as opposed to humiliation.

Which sentence best explains how the use of parallelism in the excerpt supports Baldwins?

The best sentence that explains the use of parallelism in James Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son" is that it establishes a mood of sympathy by showing that Baldwin was frightened. The answer is letter A. Parallelism is the usage of words that makes it grammatically similar.

What are the characteristics of James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son?

Answer Expert Verified. The correct option is C. The novel, 'The Note of a a Native Son was a non fictional work, this is because the author actually wrote about an event that is real, an event that really happened.

Which sentence best explains how the structure of the excerpt supports the authors purpose Notes of a Native Son?

Having mentioned the former, the sentence that best explains how the structure of the excerpt supports the author's purpose is: “d.it interweaves elements of narrative and commentary to convey the message that hatred is destructive.” With this sentence we can find the perfect reason for expressions like “injustice, ...

What rhetorical device is James Baldwin most clearly using in this passage and with that sound my frozen blood abruptly thawed?

Answer: D) Figurative language.

Which rhetorical device are these sentences most clearly using?

Which rhetorical device are these sentences most clearly using? The correct answer is: Parallelism.

Student Number: 0343232 Prof. Seagull

ENGL 101-31 Notes of Native Son (Essay 1) “Notes of Native Son” by James Baldwin deals with hatred relationship between him and his father. As Baldwin grows older, he experiences racism by white oppression. Baldwin and his Negro race were discriminated against in many aspects of their lives. Reading “Notes of Native Son,” from the introduction to the conclusion, the point he was trying to make is how hating one race for so long can destroy a person like it destroyed his father. Baldwin uses his father as an example of effect discrimination can have. He wishes he could discuss his own problems with his father He says, “When he was dead I realized that I hardly ever spoken to him. When he was dead a long time I began to wish I had.” He uses this theme as a way to discuss racial issues. James Baldwin and his family had no income coming to the household which created tension in the family. When James Baldwin told his mother that a white school teacher would be coming in their house, his father was very upset about it. The father asked, “What interest she could possibly have in our house, in a boy like me.” He told his father it has to do something with education. James Baldwin father had a bad experience with whites, the father did not want his son to go through life like he