Rhetorical Devices In How It Feels To Be Colored Me

1. In Song of Myself 15, Walt Whitman personifies “America” as its people, living, breathing and working towards the greater goal of contributing to their country. This sense of unabashed patriotism pervades Whitman’s prose. Whitman uses simple language, often a noun describing the occupation followed by a verb describing the task. The repetition of this simple form exhibits the American masses working harmoniously. “The pilot seizes the king-pin…, the mate stands braced in the whale-boat…, the duck shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches”, (Whitman 33). “America” is its people working together with one another, or as Whitman says “Of these one and all I weave the song of myself” (Whitman 34). The identity of “America” lies in its people.

2. Dubois shows “America” through the eyes of a black person in The Souls of Black Folk. The American Negro

In How It Feels to Be Colored Me, Zora Hurston’s “America” is an opportunity not to be missed. With Emancipation providing her ancestors with freedom, Reconstruction providing the necessary push, and the generation preceding her providing the guidance, Hurston feels that she is poised to succeed in post-slavery “America”. Her African ancestry may arise in certain moments, such as listening to jazz music, but she always “creeps back slowly to the veneer we call civilization with the last tone” (Hurston). She describes all the races of “America” as bags, filled with things valuable and worthless. If the bags were emptied into a pile and refilled, “none would be altered greatly” (Hurston). Even though “America” is filled with many races and the prejudice that comes with them, every human is still the same underneath. Everyone belongs to one singular conscionseness in “America”, as “the Great Stuffer of Bags” probably filled everyone’s bag from the same pile. Hurston describes it as “the Great Soul” (Hurston). Everyone citizen of “America” is a part of “America”, whether the country is “right or wrong”