Dehumanization In Society And Malcom X

For years there have been a countless number of people who have tried to bring the subject of prison reform to the light of the public eye. In the book Prison Writing in 20th- century America edited by H. Bruce Franklin, there are featured excerpts from authors Donald Lowrie and Malcom X’s novels that are based around their life changing personal experiences in prison in the early to mid1900s. Whereas Lowrie’s excerpt tells a story omnisciently of how a single warden was able to initiate a major change in San Quentin Prison in only 6 months; Malcom X however tells his readers firsthand of his transformation during his incarceration in two different prison colonies. Although they share their stories from different points of view, they both express similar motifs of change and share a common external conflict of dehumanization in prison.

Although Lowrie and Malcom X wrote their stories based upon the similar motif of change, the two authors came from two different backgrounds. The excerpt featured in Prison Writings from his book entitled My Life in Prison, readers are primarily informed of Lowrie’s troubled past. In 1901, Lowrie left his fate upon his “last coin to

He was able to make a personal connection with the readers that Lowrie could not. For example, he was able to make the readers visualize how serious his addiction to reading came by stating the following,” Each time I heard the approaching footsteps, I jumped into bed and feigned sleep” (155). He proceeded with, “And as soon as the guard passed, I got back out of the bed onto the floor area of that light-glow, where I would read for another fifty-eight minutes – until the guard approached again” (155). By those quotes alone, a reader is able to put themselves in Malcom’s