My Notes on a Native Son

This collection of James Baldwins essays, up until 1955, was quite interesting.
Readers can truly feel James Baldwins passion for each topic coming through the page.
James Baldwins intellect and intuitions shined in each of his essays. However, it was James
Baldwins passion, intellect, and intuitions that came across as mildly arrogant and prejudice.
A great portion of James Baldwins first essay in this book, Everybodys Protest
Novel focused on Uncle Toms Cabin as a main example. He brought up some excellent
points regarding Harriet Beecher Stowes portrayal of African Americans in her time. James
Baldwin is right in his analysis of the married couple, George and Eliza. Other than the
obvious African American character, Uncle Tom, George and Eliza are the only other main
African American characters in Uncle Toms Cabin, and as James Baldwin points out in this
first essay, Harriet Beecher Stowe does not do a very good job depicting them as African
American. He is right that both George and Eliza come off as white. I am sure this is a fact
that is talked about in many classrooms after reading Uncle Toms Cabin, however it is the
way James Baldwin describes this fact that comes off as arrogant and prejudice. He does not
look at the reasons as to why Harriet Beecher Stowe may have made these two characters
white, nor does he seem to acknowledge the fact that this is considered the book to read
about with the anti-slave message. It is quite possible that Harriet Beecher Stowe chose to
make the characters of George and Eliza white in order for the white men and women
reading this book to feel more connected to them. Perhaps Harriet Beecher Stowe wanted her
white readers to realize that African Americans are human too, and to do so she knew she

had to make them seem more white. Also the fact that this was a novel written by a white
woman, who at this time had nearly just a many rights as a free African American man,
writing in favor of abolishing slavery, is in of itself a huge deal. It is even more impressive
that her work is still being read in todays society; as a matter of fact it is a required reading
in nearly every high school in the country. For James Baldwin to not only disregard these
facts, but to put them down, is a huge insult. Yes, James Baldwin was trying to prove the
point that everyone thinks that just because they believe in something, or against something,
that they can go and write their own novel in protest or support of it. He is trying to say that
just because you dont support, in terms of todays readers, troops in Syria fitting ISIS does
not mean you can go and write a book in the perspective of a soldier being sent there. There
is a right and wrong way to use a text, especially one as well known and influential as Uncle
Toms Cabin, and the fact is that James Baldwin did it wrong.
As for James Baldwins second essay in this book, Many Thousands Gone, seems
to focus a lot on stereotyping. It seems to go without saying that James Baldwin, most likely
did not think about a future in which these statements made in this essay would not be true,
or at least many of them would not be true. It is a sad truth that no American citizen can go
out into the world and honestly say that there isnt a single person here in America that
doesnt think of statistics, slums, rapes, injustices, [and] remote violence when the think of
an African American, which is what he is getting at in this essay. Nevertheless, that same
American can go out and say that the vast majority of Americans, ranging from all
ethnicities, religions, and backgrounds, do not have these stereotypes in mind when they hear

the term African American or black. Do we as a society still create stereotypes?

Unfortunately yes, we as a society do stereotype people. However this is not strictly an
American form of thinking, people from all over the world do the same thing, it is really a
human thing to do. Here in America we have begun to stereotype Latin Americans as the
slums or the lowest class due to the rise in illegal immigration. However in England, they
stereotype the Irish as drunkard and always wearing a kilt. Even Baldwin himself seems to
be stereotyping white Americans in this essay, saying that they all think of African
Americans in the same way.
Another fact about Many Thousands Gone, is that it is very dated with the terms
that James Baldwin uses in it. Someone reading it in todays society has to put aside many of
their current understandings of the world and how African Americans are seen now. A reader
in todays society has to realize that the term Negro was what was used by both Caucasian
Americans and African Americans of the time. However the way that James Baldwin is using
the term Negro in America sounds very aggressive. In todays terms, it seems almost
sarcastic the way he is using it in this essay, only adding to the appearance of arrogance on
his part.
Another essay that makes James Baldwin seem, not only arrogant but also quite
pompous is A Question of Identity. The first impression a reader get of James Baldwin in
this essay is the following:
The American student colony in Paris is a social phenomenon so amorphous as
to at once demand and defy the generality. One is far from being in the

position of finding not enough to say - one finds far too much, and everything
one finds is contradictory. What one wants to know at bottom, is what they
came to find: to which question there are at least as many answers as there
are faces at the caf tables.
His use of rhetoric in this paragraph makes him seem pompous for many reasons, his use of
large words is one of them. James Baldwin did not need to use the word amorphous in
this paragraph, a word that the average reader would not know. It is also the way James
Baldwin worded each of these sentences that gives of a whole I-am-superior-to-you vibe,
only adding to the sense of pompousness.
The essay Notes of a Native Son, in which this book gets its title from, starts off on
a very negative tone with the open sentence being On the 29th of July, in 1943, my father
died. Then, just two sentences later, he brings up the Detroit Race Riot and how it was the
bloodiest race riot. Even though this essay started out bleak, it seemed to be his most
passionate and sincere essay in the whole book. This obviously is because of the fact that he
is writing about his fathers death and how it has affected him. This is the first essay that any
reader can truly began to sympathize and relate to James Baldwin as a writer. He does not
seem to be using his fathers death to prove a point, or for an agenda. It is more of a
memorial to his fathers life and to his memories of the time that surrounded it. By the end of
this essay, a reader can begin to forget the arrogance and prejudices James Baldwin portrays
in all the other essays in this book.

Even though James Baldwin comes off as arrogant and prejudice in his writing, thus
alienating many of his readers, he does have a way with words. His introduction to The
Harlem Ghetto is an excellent example of this.
Now as then the buildings are old and in desperate need of repair, the streets
are crowded and dirty, there are too many human beings per square block.
Rents are 10 to 58 percent higher than anywhere else in the city; food,
expensive everywhere, is more expensive here and of an inferior quality; and
now that the war is over and money is dwindling, clothes are carefully
shopped for and seldom bought. Negroes, traditionally the last to be hired and
the first to be fired, are finding jobs harder to get, and, while prices are rising
implacably, wages are going down.
He was able to really make the reader feel the anguish the African Americans must have
been feeling at the time. His use of phrases like inferior quality, leaves a bad taste in the
readers mouth, as if they had taken a bit of the food and have the same feeling. He also does
a masterful job of wording his sentences, making them seem to drag on like a bad day that
just seems to just get worse and never end.
Overall, this is a book that every English major should read, if not for James
Baldwins excellent use of rhetoric, but also for the historical content it provides readers.
Also since James Baldwin is a fairly well known writer from the mid-1900s, reading these
essays is an outstanding way to learn about his life and his experiences. Yes, the man was an

arrogant, pompous, prejudice man, but he was an arrogant, pompous, prejudice man who
knew his way around the English language and how to write a magnificent essay.