The essay I chose is titled, Notes of a Native Son. This essay speaks a lot on injustice, but one thing that still seems to puzzle me is in the second section of the essay. The essay is broken up into three sections, the second section is when Baldwin (the author) is explaining the race riots in Harlem. His description on what he experiences in his surrounding is weird, for example he says “I had never before known it to be so violently still”. I’m still questioning what it is that he is trying to say in this second section. The most striking feature of Baldwin’s essay is in his final paragraph where he mentions “that one must never, in ones own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one’s strength”. This is a striking quote because it connects the whole piece together. This quote is what Baldwin’s father attempted to do to fight the social injustices he faced in his life, but what Baldwin learns from his fathers failure is to not fight hate with more hate, but to free his heart from hate and learn to fight social injustices another way.
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