Phenomenon Concept Implications

Consequence Price The word price is related to the

consequence, and sacrificing the
kinsmen that agreed to be baptized
will deal with themselves
White community White Wilderness The author uses this term with
ambiguity – he relates the fact that
the village is surrounded by
mountains, ice, and snow with the
fact that the village is composed only
of man’s
Actions History How history is related to how people
and societies behave. The past still
acts in our present and future as if it
were rooted in our community,
whether consciously or not.
History & Power Stranger The reason that Baldwin remains a
stranger even after years is the fact
that the people in the village do not
understand his ancestor’s history.
Therefore, they cannot understand
him.
Alienation Salvation How language controls the universe
and can alienate people – as the
African natives being baptized in
order to receive “salvation”.

During my first reading of “Stranger in the Village” a quotation that captured my interest and at the
same time brought me questions was: “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them”.
After a deep reading and re-reading, summarizing the overall context, discussing, and at the end creating
my own chart with the keywords and the implications, I could clearly understand Baldwin’s idea and
capture his intention on the quote mentioned. The tool of working with paraphrasing, and the chart
helped me create my own word connections; I could bring his words to my vocabulary, creating a simple
structure in my mind that made my understanding easy. For instance: Relating “History” with “Actions”
and combining the sentence with the overall ideas stated in the paragraph allowed me to create my
implication, a simple summary of the word and its meaning. Besides that, this process was truly delightful,
where I captured myself reading and re-reading the essay for hours, exploring sentences and quotations,
and looking at them in a different way. It is a fantastic feeling of discovering words inside of words – enjoy
and accurately capture the author’s intention.

Consciousness Simplicity
Naivete
Ignorance
Reflection
Nationality
Civilization