The Fire Next Time By James Baldwin

The playwright, novelist and essayist, James Baldwin, published the novel The Fire Next Time in 1963. Unlike many of his earlier pieces of literature, this particular novel was aimed to educate white Americans on the injustices and oppression that exist for black Americans. In this novel, Baldwin incorporated three major themes that helps the reader with understanding characters and Baldwin as a writer. The themes Baldwin highlighted in this novel are: The “negro problem, The ineffectiveness of religion and intergenerational influences. Baldwin throughout the novel revisited these themes emphasizing them with quotes that further elaborate the themes he chose to highlight in this novel. First, one major theme that Baldwin highlights in The Fire Next Time is the “negro” problem. The negro problem was a term used in the 1950’s

In “My Dungeon Shook” Baldwin writes a letter to his nephew which described the harsh realities of the world he was forced to live in. On page 7 go he novel Baldwin states,“You were norm where you where born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being”This quote is evidence that Baldwin intended to write this letter to inform his nephew of the plight of the black community. He also uses this letter to speak of the dangers of those that wanted to change the norm for blacks at the time. Baldwin also states, “Any upheaval in