Read the excerpt from Notes of a Native Son . He was not a young man when we were growing up and he had already suffered many kinds of ruin; in his outrageously demanding and protective way he loved his children, who were black like him and menaced , like him; and all these things sometimes showed in his face when he tried, never to my knowledge with any success, to establish contact with any of us. Which best explains why Baldwin chooses the word “menaced”?
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?
Read the excerpt from Notes of a Native Son . A few hours after my father’s funeral, while he lay in state in the undertaker’s chapel, a race riot broke out in Harlem. On the morning of the 3rd of August, we drove my father to the graveyard through a wilderness of smashed plate glass. Baldwin describes a personal event taking place amid a riot to
Read the excerpt from Notes of a Native Son . A few hours after my father’s funeral, while he lay in state in the undertaker’s chapel, a race riot broke out in Harlem. On the morning of the 3rd of August, we drove my father to the graveyard through a wilderness of smashed plate glass. Baldwin places his father’s funeral in the historical context of the Harlem riots to show that racial prejudice in early 20th-century America
Read the excerpt from Notes of a Native Son . The only white people who came to our house were welfare workers and bill collectors. It was almost always my mother who dealt with them, for my father’s temper, which was at the mercy of his pride, was never to be trusted. It was clear that he felt their very presence in his home to be a violation: this was conveyed by his carriage, almost ludicrously stiff, and by his voice, harsh and vindictively polite. Which figurative language device does Baldwin use to emphasize the rage buried beneath his father’s outward appearance and actions?
Read the excerpt from Notes of a Native Son . He had lived and died in an intolerable bitterness of spirit and it frightened me, as we drove him to the graveyard through those unquiet , ruined streets, to see how powerful and overflowing this bitterness could be and to realize that this bitterness now was mine. Which best explains Baldwin’s choice to use the word “unquiet” instead of “loud” to describe the streets of Harlem after the race riot?
Read the sentence from Notes of a Native Son . Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated and this was an immutable law. Which best explains why Baldwin uses the word “immutable”?
Read the excerpt from Notes of a Native Son . 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. Which best expresses the connection that Baldwin makes between the historical context of racial prejudice and the physical effects it has on his father?
Read the excerpt from Notes of a Native Son . 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. Which best describes the realization Baldwin has about racial prejudice in early 20th-century America?
Read the excerpt from Notes of a Native Son . It had something to do with his blackness, I think—he was very black—with his blackness and his beauty, and with the fact that he knew that he was black but did not know that he was beautiful. He claimed to be proud of his blackness but it had also been the cause of much humiliation and it had fixed bleak boundaries to his life. What does the excerpt tell readers about racial prejudice in early 20th-century America?
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