Authors use rhetorical strategies to express themes in their writing. Different rhetorical strategies help convey different themes with varying degrees of effectiveness. One way to measure the effectiveness is to rhetorical analyze two pieces of writing to each other and see which is best. Take Nancy Mairs and James Baldwin for instance. Mairs’s On Being a Cripple seems very different from Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son from a distance. Only when you begin to rhetorically analyze the texts do you see where the two compare and contrast. Using the soapstone method it is easy to compare and contrast the authors. Both essays were written at a high school and beyond level, Mairs has aimed hers more to the women that read magazines while Baldwin …show more content…
He eventually became his father in the sense of his attitude toward society. It is obvious Baldwin has a negative view of society and is against how society treats people who are not part of the majority. Another way to look at the similarities and differences of Mairs and Baldwin is to look at the way they use ethos, pathos, and logos in their essays. Ethos, pathos, and logos are rhetorical strategies that use an appeal to credibility, emotion, and logic. Both authors have a good amount of ethos because Mairs lives with Multiple Sclerosis and Baldwin lived during the Jim Crow Era. Mairs presents her medical profile and Baldwin talks about growing up in the Jim Crow Era, giving them both logos. The interesting part is pathos. Pathos is the most powerful of the three and many authors rely on it most. To appeal to pathos they use similar and different strategies. Mairs uses humour and anecdotal evidence. Baldwin also uses anecdotal evidence, but nothing else. This is something you don’t have too deep into to understand. It is very obvious from Baldwin’s tone throughout the essay that he has a more negative view on society and how racism is during that time period. Mairs keeps her essay more light and positive with humor while Baldwin doesn’t try to cover up how things were with
Baldwin was successful in telling readers of The New York Times about the disrespect of African American culture by using pathos, ethos, and logos.
...e “big picture” in the world. Some events may not seem significant, but they are somehow related to other events that are going on in the world. Baldwin also took events that coincidentally happened at the same of his father’s death and analyzed them, giving his own personal opinion. Baldwin also had a constant motif of life versus death throughout his life story and his analysis of events. Baldwin’s creative writing skills show through his style of writing and makes the reader feel as though he is being directly spoken to. He gives the audience the opportunity to feel the emotions that he felt during these events. It is this ability that made James Baldwin the celebrated talent that he became.
TASK : Explain how the two authors develop power in the texts. Focus on the significant similar methods and significant differences in making a reading of a theme explicit to readers.
Baldwin weaves in and out of his personal experiences and private reasons to give the reader both a small and large perspective of what is going on at the time. It’s important for the reader to have a small, personal perspective so they can connect with the emotions Baldwin expresses. At the same time a large general perspective is needed because it shows the reader that Baldwin’s experiences, although unique, is connected to a larger group of people, that in one way or another, his plight is the plight of many.
...his father had acted the way he did, which caused him to be committed. He was facing the same experiences and the same side-effects his father once felt. However, faced with this dilemma between acceptance and equal power, Baldwin looks to the only man he can trust to help him, his father. He trusts his father because he knows that his father went through the same dilemma he is going through, he has seen the same affects in his father’s rage and hate. However, his father already passed away, and what help that could have been gathered from his father is gone; Baldwin can only piece together his memories of his father’s character and life and compare it to his own to see how the two are really alike.
...and be prepared to bow our heads to injustice or demand "equal power" (238) and fight for our rights to the best of our abilities. Baldwin looks at his relationship with his father remorsefully and wishes his father was alive to guide him. Unlike his father, Baldwin decides to take on life as it comes and not run away from the world. He chooses a tough path, of keeping his "heart free of hatred and despair" (238) because he realizes that hatred will only isolate him from the people around him. Baldwin is unsure of how successful he will be and what the future holds for him, but he does hope of not having a secluded future like his father.
Along with Baldwin’s plea for social and political integration, Baldwin believes in hope and brotherhood, just as Dr. Martin Luther King. Baldwin suggests the only way for which both Negros and white American will transcend from the past is to accept it, in order to be released from it.
“James Baldwin’s turbulent and passionate life informs all of his writings” (Magill 104). Baldwin was a well-defined writer. “In his essays, he constantly depicted and expanded upon personal experiences” (Magill 104). Baldwin's ability to write with such passion and drama is what makes him truly gifted. “In his fiction he drew on autobiographical events, issues, and characters, building dramatic situations that closely reflected his intimate experience of the world” (Magill 104). Baldwin’s talent of choosing words carefully and connecting images with emotions helped him achieve maximum effect in his work (Magill 104). His work was fascinating. “James Baldwin wrote to understand the trials of the past and to articulate principles for the future” (Magill 104). Baldwin’s writing style is what has made him so famous
Baldwin poses that Blackness determines your circumstances from birth. “This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish…. You were born
The third and final part of the essay deals mostly with Baldwin’s father’s funeral. The day of his father’s funeral was Baldwin’s 19th birthday and he spent most of the day drinking with a friend. At the funeral, his father was eulogized as a thoughtful, patient, and forbearing Christian. Baldwin says this is a complete misrepresentation of the embittered and angry man they all knew. Nonetheless, he concludes, given the burden a poor black man with nine children had to bear, such a eulogy was somehow just. His father may have been cruel and distant, but he also had to contend with raising children in a world he knew hated them, and the hatred he felt in turn for this world had consumed and troubled him in ways unknown to anyone but him.
Baldwin and his ancestors share this common rage because of the reflections their culture has had on the rest of society, a society consisting of white men who have thrived on using false impressions as a weapon throughout American history. Baldwin gives credit to the fact that no one can be held responsible for what history has unfolded, but he remains restless for an explanation about the perception of his ancestors as people. In Baldwin?s essay, his rage becomes more directed as the ?power of the white man? becomes relevant to the misfortune of the American Negro (Baldwin 131). This misfortune creates a fire of rage within Baldwin and the American Negro. As Baldwin?s American Negro continues to build the fire, the white man builds an invisible wall around himself to avoid confrontation about the actions of his ?forefathers? (Baldwin 131). Baldwin?s anger burns through his other emotions as he writes about the enslavement of his ancestors and gives the reader a shameful illusion of a Negro slave having to explai...
Baldwin?s idea of change stemmed from his intense religious beliefs. This particular change was a personal change for Baldwin himself. Baldwin was confused and mesmerized by the teachings of religion. He so enjoyed and believed in the ?blind-faith? that he took up preaching. He wrote intense sermons and became enthralled in his church and beliefs. While preaching he began to question and examine the life in which he lived. He questioned himself and the ideas and beliefs he conveyed to his congregation and the validity of the other preachers. He came to realize that even the church was corrupt. He became vary Socratic in his thinking; Baldwin began to realize that the truths that he thought to be true were not exactly what he thought they were. He realized that the Bible is cluttered with discrepancies. Baldwin came to realize that the ?good book? was discriminatory against whites, yet told its followers to love everyone; conversely when read in a white context was discriminatory against blacks, who were thought to be the sons of Ham. He discovered this contradicti...
The key themes of Baldwin’s essay are love, hatred, rage, and anger. These themes quickly transform into recurring strands that Baldwin applies throughout his essay. These ...
Baldwin makes people see the flaws in our society by comparing it to Europe. Whether we decide to take it as an example to change to, or follow our American mindset and take this as the biased piece that it is and still claim that we are the best country in the world, disregard his words and continue with our strive for
... to compare himself with his father. He made the riots in Harlem and Detroit versus the police share similar qualities to his relationship with his father. Baldwin’s word choosing is also very effective in Notes of a Native Son. He italicizes certain words in order to portray his emotions towards a situation without even having to go into an in-depth explanation. Lastly, Baldwin’s most obvious trait in weaving both narrative and analytical writing is the use of word repetition. He continually used the strongest word that he could think of (hate) and just repeat it over and over again. The main thing to notice is that Baldwin uses the same word not only through his narrative but also within his analysis.