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Braden Burge

Jackie Burr

English 1010, Section 2

30 Oct. 2019

“Learning to Read” Rhetorical Analysis

Prison is a great place to get an education and you have all the time you ever wanted

to study. At least according to Malcolm X, who learned how to read and write in prison.

Malcolm X’s experience is talked about in the excerpt called “Learning to Read” from the

autobiography by Alex Haley. Malcom refers to his time in prison as his journey of self-teaching

and studying. This passage is enhanced by Malcom’s use of meaningful personal experiences;

however, toward the end of the article he starts to focus on racism and it feels like the paper turns

into an argumentative paper, encouraging violence and extensive measures to ensure equality

which overall throws off the rhythm and pace of the passage.

In “Learning to Read,” Malcolm first refers to how he was able to communicate only in

slang terms or unrefined sentences. He then mentions that he owes his whole education to prison.

He discovered his desire to learn when he tried to write letters but decided that slang would not

be the best language to use to write to his personal hero, Mr. Elijah Muhammad. His first step in

his quest for education was to request materials from his prison. When he received the tablets

and the dictionary that he requested, he began by writing down the whole first page and reciting

it to himself. The next day he would repeat the process with the second page and re-learn the

words he forgot. After doing this with the entire dictionary, Malcolm found he could

comprehend and read entire books. Malcolm continues to describe how he was able to study for
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hours upon hours, even when he wasn’t supposed to. For example, Malcolm expressed this by

mentioning:

When I had progressed to really serious reading, every night at about ten p.m. I would be

outraged with the “lights out.” It always seemed to catch me right in the middle of

something engrossing. Fortunately, right outside my door was a corridor light that cast a

glow into my room. The glow was enough to read by, once my eyes adjusted to it. So

when “lights out” came, I would just sit on the floor where I could continue reading in

that glow. (260)

He continues by saying how, once every hour, guards would come by and he would pretend to

be asleep. Malcolm then begins to learn things from other subject areas including; history,

science, and math. One topic that stays common throughout the whole piece is the concept of

racism which touches Malcom X because of his African American background.

Malcom X uses his personal experiences to appeal to pathos. He opens up with his first

reason to learn, “In the street, I had been the most articulate hustler out there…[b]ut now, trying

to write simple English, I not only wasn’t articulate, I wasn’t even functional” (257). This

sentence shows the starting point for Malcolm in his educational life. Most people nowadays

understand the feeling of not being the one that knows everything, but instead, the one that is

being taught something that is difficult to understand. The embarrassing moment of being

confident in a topic then being torn down by a bad score on a test that you had so much

confidence in. Malcom X knew this when he wrote about his embarrassment. He wrote that

particular example to intrigue the reader and get them to continue reading.
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Another example of the personal experiences used by Malcolm X is as follows, “I

suppose it was inevitable that as my word-base broadened, I could for the first time pick up a

book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying” (259). Some would say

that Malcolm X’s improvement is enough and that studying past that point would be extra credit

or overkill. But to him stopping there would be like a doctor learning human anatomy but not

studying how to fix a problem. Malcolm X continued to learn and strive for greatness. He was

hungry for more and continued to learn on his own.

In continuation, Malcolm X proceeds to use personal experiences to inform the reader of

more ways to learn and what to do with that knowledge. As he tries to expand his knowledge to

all different types of subject areas he finds a quote from Mr. Muhammad that stresses how

history was “whitened” (260). In Malcolm X’s continual attempts to convince the reader of the

history book’s inaccurate representation he states, “You can hardly show me a black adult in

America-or a white one, for that matter- who knows from the history books anything like the

truth about the black man’s role” (261). This fact affected him personally and he set out to find

more about the past of blacks and the importance they played. In his research, he was able to find

some compelling facts from many different sources. One source was from a book on genetics

with which Malcolm X summarized one simple but overlooked fact:

If you started with a black man, a white man could be produced; but starting with a white

man, you never could produce a black man-because the white gene is recessive. And

since no one disputes that there was but one Original Man, the conclusion is clear. (261)

With this fact, Malcolm X is implying that the first man had to have been black because genetics

state that white men can’t create black men. Malcolm X knew that when he said this that many
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people would reply with negative comments or unpleasant reactions because of the fact that what

he said is against what most religions believe and against the norm of society.

Throughout Malcolm X’s work, personal experiences continue to support his message

and appeal to pathos. Malcolm X concludes by mentioning, “Every time I catch a plane, I have

with me a book that I want to read...If I weren’t out here every day battling the white man, I

could spend the rest of my life just reading” (266). This shows his dedication to learn and that

the learning never ends. Even though Malcolm X started focusing more on racism instead of

education and personal learning, his writing was able to keep the message together and correctly

deliver it to the rest of the world. Although his topic isn’t always something that someone will

remember, the lasting impact of this topic will continue to affect many lives to come.

Work Cited

X, Malcom. “Learning to Read.” 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology. Ed. Samuel Cohen. New

York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 257-266. Print.