Private and Public Notes of a Native Son

The Private and Public Notes of a Native Son

The middle of the twentieth century saw the height of the civil rights struggle of African Americans. Amid this tumultuous era rose up a generation of prominent African American writers, and among them was James Baldwin. In “Notes of a Native Son,” an essay that he wrote more than a decade after his father died, Baldwin recalls and reflects on his troubled interaction with his father, a man whom he has hated all his life. His vivid narration of his father and his personal encounters around the time his father died reveals the evolution of his view on the racial issues in America. Baldwin extensively draws on his past experience as an embodiment of the public experience shared by many other people to make a strong case for his argument.

James Baldwin never fails to express his disgust for his father. Not far into the essay, he reminds the reader of the two race riots in 1943, and he mockingly describes this state of instability and social discontent that coincided his father’s death as “a corrective for the pride of his eldest son” (63). According to Baldwin, not only did his father always fail to establish contact with people, including his children, he attempted to keep his children from contact with the outside world. He forbid his children to play Louis Armstrong’s records, distrusted all white people, and constantly associated his children’s friends with the devil. Although he had good intentions, he never managed to convert them into pleasing deeds, and he, in Baldwin’s own words, “treated almost everybody on our block with a most charitable asperity” (67). Baldwin’s mental image of his father is little short than that of a tyrant. This comparison is ...

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...hich, in his case, were his dead father and his new born sister. To believe in unimportant things such as skin color will only led to one’s destruction, because, as he comments, “hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated.” (84). He maintains that accepting things as they are while at the same fighting with one’s full strength against injustice are two conflict ideas that one has to hold in mind. Baldwin does not intend to teach his moral discovery to the reader as an absolute truth. In fact, he concedes that he too has questions that the future will answer. However, supported by his narration and analysis of his private and the public experiences, he makes a strong argument.

Works Cited

Baldwin, James. “Notes of a Native Son.” 1995. James Baldwin: Collected Essays. Ed. Toni Morrison. New York: Library of America, 1998. 63-84.