Decide Question:
The project prompt that I've decided on doing is: "Write a piece in which you explore the following: How does a story teach us about a time or place differently than a history book?"
Reread the prompt:
What does this story teach us?
Is there an overall point that the narrator/writer is trying to prove or point out?
What does this story teach/tell us about the time period?
How does this story differ from that of a history book? Any similarities between the story and history book?
Choose readings:
The reading I'd like to use for this prompt is James Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son." This story is on pages 736 - 751. I feel this reading is a good choice because it can easily be related to history, history books, and will allow me to relate the narrator's life to that of other "Negroes" and Negroes that are more of the "original" versus those that are a little more "Americanized."
Choose Literary Devices:
Characterization - this will help me because I can describe both the narrator as well as how he describes his father.
Dialogue - the lack of dialogue between the narrator and his father; the dialogue between the narrator and people that won't serve/help him like they would a white person.
Point of View - the point of view lets us (the reader) know more about him, his life, the life of his father, and the life/relationship between the narrator and his father. We get to see first hand what it's like being discriminated against.
Make Detailed Notes/Outline:
- This story teaches us about a different time and place differently than a history book because it gives us an actual story about someone and what they went through. Whereas a history book doesn't give us that personal connection of what someone is going through; history books more or less just gives us dates and places of facts/events that have happened in our past. This story gives us both a history lesson about the time and place the narrator was at but also gives us a personalized journey.
- The characterization literary device will come in handy for me to go into depth about the narrator and his father.
- "On the 29th of July, in 1943, my father died. On the same day, a few hours later, his last child was born." (P. 736) This quote (in my opinion), makes the narrator come off as neutral about his father passing away; he doesn't seem sad nor happy about this event.
- "The day of my father's funeral had also been my nineteenth birthday. As we drove him to the graveyard, the spoils of injustice, anarchy, discontent, and hatred were all around us." (P. 737) The narrator seems sullen, about his father and the craziness of the world that he left them in.
- Research a little history during this period (1943) and incorporate/relate it to the story.
- "I had not known my father very well. We had got on badly, partly because we shared, in our different fashions, the vice of stubborn pride. When he was dead I realized that I had hardly ever spoken to hi. When he had been dead a long time I began to wish I had. It seems to be typical of life in America, where opportunities, real and fancied, are thicker than anywhere else on the globe, that the second generation has no time to talk to the first. No one, including my father, seems to have known exactly how old he was, but his mother had been born during slavery. He was of the first generation of free men. He, along with thousands of other Negroes, came North after 1919 and I was part of the generation which had never seen the landscape of what Negroes sometimes call the Old Country*." (P. 737) (* "Old Country = The South. Over a million African Americans left the South for the Midwest and the Northeast after the First World War 1914 - 1918.") For me, this passage says so much. It gives us an insight to him and his father's relationship - obviously his father came over here from the North after 1919; his father and that generation refer to the landscape they were a part of the Old Country; and the narrator and his father didn't seem to talk much, although after his dad died, he wished they would have talked more. In relation to history, that time period and those generations weren't used to "talking" to their kids/families about certain things, and I'm sure the women were more or less taught to listen to their husbands and "obey" what they say and ask.
- Another quote that shows their relationship is when Baldwin writes, "I do not remember, in all those years, that one of his children was ever glad to see him come home." (P. 738) The children seem scared and nervous to be around their father, as Baldwin even goes on to write that after he died, the kids actually started having their friends over. I also feel this quote shows that the kids and their dad obviously didn't have a great relationship - possibly because the dad felt like his kids had it easier than he did growing up and didn't have to endure slavery, discrimination, and having to migrate to a different place.
- "He used to make little jokes about our poverty, which never, of course, seemed very funny to us." (P. 738) In history books, at least the ones I remember, always seemed to portray lighter skinned people as more powerful, righteous, deserving, and richer than, for example, the Negroes. His dad joking about their poverty isn't funny, to anyone, especially his children. It's like he was rubbing it in their face, yet not really doing anything to get them out of poverty and give them all a better, richer life.
- "It was the same story all over New Jersey, in bars, bowling alleys, diners, places to live. I was always being forced to leave, silently, or with mutual imprecations. I very shortly became notorious and children giggled behind me when I was passed and their elders whispered or shouted - they really believed that I was mad." (P. 741) History during this time, the separation between Negroes and whites was a "thing," and many Negroes were not served at all, or were told to go elsewhere for their business. Even in our world today, although we've come along way from previous separation, there is still that divide amongst our people.
- "My last night in New Jersey, a white friend from New York took me to the nearest big town, Trenton, to go to the moves and have a few drinks. As it turned out, he also saved me from, at the ver least, a violent whipping. Almost every detail of that night stands out very clearly in my memory. I even remember the name of the movie we saw...called This Land Is Mine. I remember the name of the diner we walked into when the movie ended: it was the 'American Diner.' When we walked in the counterman asked what we wanted and I remember answering with the casual sharpness which had become my habit: 'We want a hamburger and a cup of coffee, what do you think we want?' I do not know why, after a year of such rebuffs, I so completely failed to anticipate his answer, which was, of course, 'We don't serve Negroes here.'" (P. 741) Again, some things never change throughout history. In our day and age, there are many places that have some kind of sign that says that they can refuse service to anyone. I mean, it doesn't say they can serve someone because of their race or ethnicity, but I'm sure some places do still do that, which is very unfair. It someone goes into an establishment and is very loud, rude, causing a ruckus - then yes, don't serve them and ask them to leave. But if they are kind, willing patrons of any establishment, they should be served like anyone else.
Cited Sources:
James Baldwin
The Norton Anthology World Literature Volume F
Pages 736 - 751
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