Notes-of-a-Native-Son的分析.doc

Analysis Notes of a Native Son is a non-fiction passage by James Baldwin whose focus on issues of racial discrimination made him a prominent spokesperson for racial equality, especially during the civil rights movements of the 1960s. It was published in 1955. At that time, Negro earned more right and freedom than before. Notes of a Native Son reflects the society environment of that time in America and the racial discrimination. James Baldwin explored the African-Americans identity problems deeply. In his mind, Negroes should be free and equal native son of America just like the white. Thats the reason why this article named Notes of a Native Son. There are ten paragraphs in the passage. The first paragraph tells us the background of the story. There is a great change in the year which preceded his fathers death. He had been living in New Jersey, working in defense plants, working and living among southerners, white and black. The main body is from the second paragraph to the ninth paragraph. It was the same story all over New Jersey, in bars,bowling alleys diners, places to live. The white people said: “Negroes were not served here” in the restaurant. He worked in New Jersey and often turned down in segregated places. It can wreck more important things than race relations. Almost every detail of that night stands out very clearly in my memory, even the name of the movie. The lights were very dim and then something happened to him which had the force of an optical illusion ,or a nightmare. He felt ,like a physical sensation, a click at the nape of his neck as though some interior string connecting his head to his body had been cut. Then he want to do something to crush there white faces, which were crushing him. He hurled a pitcher of water at a waitress in an enormous, glittering, and fashionable restaurant. The result is running. The last paragraph is the end of the passage. He did see this: that his life, his real life, was in danger, and not from anything other people might do but from the hatred he carried in his heart. That this is not likely to happen is due to a great many reasons, most hidden and powerful among them the Negros real relation to the white American. This relation prohibits, simply, anything as uncomplicated and satisfactory as pure hatred. In order really to hate white people, one has to blot so much out of the mind-and the heart-that this hatred itself becomes an exhausting and self-destructive pose. But this does not mean, on the other hand, that love comes easily: the white world is too powerful, too ready with gratuitous humiliation, and, above all, too ignorant and too innocent for that. One is absolutely forced to make perpetual qualifications and ones own reactions are always canceling each other out. It is this, really, that has driven so many people mad, both white and black.The passage was pregnant with deep and painful observations and assumptions, but nonetheless short of solutions. The message of avoiding hatred of white people for their atrocities and treatment of black people was loud and clear. In fact, Notes of a Native Son is a book. It is widely regarded as a classic of the African-American autob