James Baldwin's The First Next Time

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James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time is a novel that views white America through the lenses of a black Negro. Baldwin’s novel consist of two essays, the shorter one is a letter to his nephew trying to give an explanation on the world he lives in and what and how it sort of got that way, the longer essay is more explicit and descriptive of the history of white America and where the black people fit in. Baldwin’s essays are very much similar to other context that we have encountered, but just have a different approach; he tries to acknowledge the wrongs, but wants to correct them starting with the white people.
The introduction to the novel is the first shorter essay from him to his nephew. Through Baldwin’s letter to his nephew he goes into depth of what kind of world he is forced to grow up in and what white America expects him to do in this world “this innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which in fact, it intended that you should perish.” (Baldwin, 7) By this last quotation Baldwin is telling his nephew that he was placed in the struggle from the beginning and is expected to suffer there forever. He goes on to say in a way that this is the case because of the fact that you are “black and no other reason” (Baldwin, 7) Baldwin’s essay was a form of delivering encouragement to the young adolescent “if you whence where you came, there is really no limits to where you can go”. He wants his nephew to know that you first have to accept what have been dealt to you and from there you can go anywhere and do anything you desire. This does show how many parents of black children had to be in able for their children to prosper rather perish, particularly during the “Movement”, but yet still today black parents still have to push th...

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... race that have been able to dodge the racial expectations the white America place on them from the time they touch the Earth. The racial society presented in Baldwin’s essays are similar because the black race has yet to get equality, but different because the world is getting better in the sense that they are not slaves, but are being oppressed yet and still during the “Movement”. I am going to end by saying that “if we do not dare everything, the fulfillment of the prophecy, recreated from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us and that God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more, the fire next time. (Baldwin, 106) James Baldwin is torn between reality and hope and he ends by saying that “I know what I am asking is impossible “but he wishes for Americans to reject this racism delusion that is being placed on black people just because of the color of their skin.

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