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James Baldwin: Notes of a Native Son

James Baldwin: Notes of a Native Son

This activity contains 3 questions.

	Analyze Baldwin’s essay as a narrative, one with several strands that move backward and forward in time. To do so, you will first need to read and annotate carefully, picking out the main narrative line involving his father’s death and funeral and the ride to the cemetery. You will need to look as well at the various incidents Baldwin narrates from earlier in his life and his report of the conflict that led to the rioting. How does he weave these together? How do the subsidiary stories contribute to the central narrative? Finally, explore how these narrative strands serve to embody Baldwin’s Central idea.   To create paragraphs in your essay response, type <p> at the beginning of the paragraph, and </p> at the end.

	Much of “Notes of a Native Son” is a portrait of Baldwin’s father and of the son’s relationship to his father. In an essay focus specifically on this aspect of the piece. How do you interpret this complex, difficult man? In writing about him some ten years later (the essay was published in 1955), to what extent does Baldwin seem to have a different view of his father than he had at the time of his death?   To create paragraphs in your essay response, type <p> at the beginning of the paragraph, and </p> at the end.

	“Hatred, which could destroy so much,” Baldwin writes, “never failed to destroy the man who hated and this was an immutable law.” Using this idea, along with the “two ideas which seemed to be in opposition” that Baldwin describes in his final paragraph, write an essay that explores your own ideas about how best to deal with bigotry and injustice.   To create paragraphs in your essay response, type <p> at the beginning of the paragraph, and </p> at the end.

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