Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a book with a powerful message about racism and white power in America. Coates chose to write his book as a letter addressed to his fifteen-year-old son, Samori. The letter format is a clever way to get his message across by making the book a personal experience, rather than preaching to the readers about racism. Early in the reading he states, “my work is to give you what I know of my own particular path while allowing you to walk your own” (Coates 39). He sets up the story by informing the reader that he is not flawless and still doesn’t fully understand life, but he is going to try his hardest to pass his knowledge of the world to his son, and anyone reading. His message throughout the story …show more content…
This makes the story much more influential because Coates has evidence to back the issues with society he is telling his son about. At the beginning of the story he tells his son how his father taught him life lessons. “My father beat me for letting another boy steal from me. Two years later he beat me for threatening my ninth-grade teacher” (Coates 28). This childhood experience taught Coates that both not being violent enough, and being too violent could cost him his life. The idea of including this lesson that his father gave him, alludes that the experiences and advice in this letter will stay with Samori for his life, comparable to how Coates will never forget the lessons his father taught him. During the letter, Coates mentions Prince Jones a pretty significant amount of times. At the beginning when he first mentions him, the reader is led to believe that he is just support for the idea that racism is still a huge issue and it is hard to see that there is a deeper message as to why he feels so strongly specifically for Prince Jones. At the end of the letter, Coates does an excellent job explaining why he feels so strongly for him. He tells about talking to his mother and how he could see Prince in himself. The idea of Coates revisiting his feelings pages later shows that he does an amazing job supporting why he feels the way he feels, which is important for the message, since typical parental advice is more emotionally guided and most reasoning is simply “because I said so.” The way Coates uses his own experiences in life, instead of giving his son advice without reasoning, allows someone reading the book to feel for Coates and what he has been through, which empowers the message he is giving to his son, and anyone who will
As Coates departs from Dr. Jones house he thought over the loss of his dear friend. He thinks of the protesters and how perhaps their bodies was abused because they knew that it was not theirs, to begin with. Coates informs his son that it is unlikely that the dreamers will never come to their consciousness. It is clear that racial justice and the dream does not seem to be going away anytime soon, that the black will suffer from inequality and injustice for a very long time. Despite, our society having a former black American president, the media focusing on the protest against police killings Coates sees no prospect of much change.
Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates produced “Between the World and Me”, a novel which is depicted from the views of the African American male, expressing views on culture and politics. Coates describes the feeling of living in the United States where Black Americans are degraded and taken advantage of. Significantly, he tells readers about the greatest factors of hindrance to the Black American community, greatly including the impact of white Americans and their impede to the growth of Black impartiality, as whites being the stern majority for hundreds of years. Considering the previous sentence, the most important message of the novel is America was built with the idea of black and white, so in order to move forward as a country, Coates’s reasoning to
In the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr., he explains to the eight clergy men, whom had previously criticized him, and to the rest of America about why he is in Birmingham. King wrote this letter to persuade and answer the criticism of why his present activities were NOT “unwise and untimely.” While writing this, King uses the three Aristotelian Appeals: ethos, pathos, and logos to fully explain his points. Throughout the second paragraph, Martin Luther King began to build his credibility.
It was at the Mecca, known to most as Howard University that Coates began to see and experience culture. It was in this plethora of minds where he begins to experience people that were searching for something bigger than the block that they lived on. Interestingly, it was not in the classroom where he found a familiar solace but it was on the Yard and the library where Coates would find his calling. It was on the Yard where he began to see that his “black world was expanding” and the “world was more than a photonegative of that of people who believe they are white.” Simply stated, it affirms to him that black people came in different shades with different backgrounds.
Phrases that he uses in order to give anger are for example; “There are many problems”, “one interrogates”, “this time of heightened concern”, “Do we really want?”, and many more of phrases and questions with the same tone. The pathos used is not very persuasive because of the lack of evidence, and the lack of back ground information. For the most part, Coates uses pathos as his supporting evidence. We can see this in the beginning of the article when he makes the audience question recent police actions as just. He continues by mentioning the names of suspects whom were killed by the police with a little bit of background information to make the audience feel anger towards the situations.
Many people forget that African Americans in this country have been enslaved for longer than they have been free. Coates reminds his son to not forget their important history and that they will continuously struggle for freedom over their own bodies. They must learn to live within a black body. These struggles can be seen in the racial profiling and brutality among police officers in cases such as Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and countless of others. He goes on to describe his childhood and how fear was the root of black existence.
I propose to take our countrymen’s claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard.” I think this passage is really powerful and direct to those who ignore the black. Another thing that stands out to me is that Coates refers to the white American as dreamers living in the dream, which is "perfect houses with nice lawns," "ice cream socials," "the Cub Scouts," etc. It’s interesting to see how Coates portrays the American Dream in this passage. The Dream, to him, is tied to those “who believe themselves to be white”.
To begin, Coates, throughout his book, talks about racial discrimination and violence. In the novel, Coates writes,
Although he believes that this question is unanswerable, Coates’ purpose is to express his deepest concerns for his son and to help him understand his personal experiences as a black man. He achieves his purpose by incorporating rhetorical skills such as ethos, pathos, and logos. Coates has been a successful journalist and writer for several years. He previously worked for The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and O
The Beautiful Struggle, written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, is a memoir that heavily reflects upon the personal experiences of a young boy that was growing up in West Baltimore. The author, Coates himself, uses his own personal experiences from his life to show the hardships that he had to endure through and preserve on in order to acquire social progress despite the ample number of historical obstacles that were present in his early life. The constant struggle to progress is social standing and striving to gain his parent’s approval and acceptance is the general theme that seems to come up throughout the memoir. In regard to impending social progress, Coates had to live through environmental and social racism along with familial behavioral changes
Although a century apart, Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from Birmingham Jail and Frederick Douglass’s What to a Slave is the fourth of July are kindred spirits. Notwithstanding the many differences in their respective writing styles, deep down the essence of the message conveyed is still very much the same. Both Martin Luther King Junior and Frederick Douglas had similar beliefs and concepts related to the treatment of the African American community. They both describe a tough yet heart breaking situation that makes them question their moral values and doubt the system and its ability to change for better.
He also shows the reader his unique relationship with his father. Maus not only
Richard Wright’s poem “Between the World and Me” mourns the tragic scene of a gruesome lynching, and expresses its harsh impact on the narrator. Wright depicts this effect through the application of personification, dramatic symbolism, and desperate diction that manifests the narrator’s agony. In his description of the chilling scene, Wright employs personification in order to create an audience out of inanimate objects. When the narrator encounters the scene, he sees “white bones slumbering forgottenly upon a cushion of ashes,” and a sapling “pointing a blunt finger accusingly at the sky.”
As Coates further explains the history of his family and his new experiences entering college, “grew up in a house drawn between love and fear (61)” I felt like my situation fell into his description. Even though he was speaking
Coates testified that “the classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free” ( Coates 48). Coates was aware that the books were the key to his knowledge and as well as his curiosity to learn about his own race. He was mostly inspired by books and his main idol Malcolm X. In a quote is claimed that he “loved Malcolm because Malcolm never lied, unlike the schools and their facade of morality” (Coates 36).