Close Reading Post 1
For the first close reading post I have chosen to focus on a passage in the first Emmett Till article. This passage is where Milam is discussing and trying to justify his actions when he murdered Emmett Till. The passage contains many contradictory ideas, which shows the difference between the way Milam wants others to see him and how he truly is. Milam begins by trying to distance himself from the blame of the murder. He asks rhetorically “Well, what else could we do? He was hopeless.” Milam is trying to push the blame on to Till to make himself appear less guilty and to make it seem like he had no other choice than to murder this boy. He then goes on to say “I’m no bully. I never hurt a nigger. I like niggers.” He wants people to see him as someone who is innocent. By claiming he is not a bully and would never hurt someone who is black he is trying to project the image of someone who is kind and is just your average guy. However, it is hard to imagine that he “never hurt a nigger” when he had just in his last sentence admitted he had no choice but to murder one. The image he is trying to project and who he truly is clash for the first time in his first few sentences. As he goes on the image of someone in the right that he is trying to show is further squelched down as he becomes more angered by what he is discussing. He starts to talk about politically charged topics of his time such as voting rights for blacks and the desegregation of schools. He claims that his family fought for his country and that they have rights. He says that as long as he is alive and can do something about it those things won’t happen in the United States. He then goes on to say “when a nigger gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he’s tired of living. I’m likely to kill him.” Once again these statements are a far cry for someone who claims to have never hurt a black person, to like black people, and to not be a bully. The more he talks about this topic and the more passionate he gets in his deep seeded hatred the further apart the image he wants gets from the reality of who he truly is.
Thank you for this post. You are kind of doing an archaeological dig except that you are really only looking at one rhetorical device in this passage, which the number of ways in which he justifies white violence to black people despite his claim to never be someone to bully or hurt a black person. If you were writing a paper I would want you to think about what other devices might be at work here as well. I’d also want you to think about what it does not just for Milam to say these things but for Huie to represent them in this way. Is Huie trying to make Milam seem as if he is contradicting himself?
Lastly, If every thing he says contradicts the idea that he his not a bully why would he say that he is not a bully? It can’t be just to get sympathy or make himself look better because then you wouldn’t say all the stuff that comes after or you would not make that claim b/c you know no one would be likely to believe it based on what you will say next.