Read the excerpt from Notes of a Native Son.The only white people who came to our house were welfare workers and bill collectors. It was almost always my mother who dealt with them, for my father’s temper, which was at the mercy of his pride, was never to be trusted. It was clear that he felt their very presence in his home to be a violation: this was conveyed by his carriage, almost ludicrously stiff, and by his voice, harsh and vindictively polite. Which figurative language device does Baldwin use to emphasize the rage buried beneath his father’s outward appearance and actions?
Read the sentence from Notes of a Native Son.Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated and this was an immutable law.Which best explains why Baldwin uses the word “immutable”?
Read the excerpt from Notes of a Native Son.That bleakly memorable morning I hated the unbelievable streets and the Negroes and whites who had, equally, made them that way. But I knew that it was folly, as my father would have said, this bitterness was folly. Which word creates the transition between the stated problem and its emerging solution?
Read the excerpt from Notes of a Native Son.The only white people who came to our house were welfare workers and bill collectors. It was almost always my mother who dealt with them, for my father’s temper, which was at the mercy of his pride, was never to be trusted. It was clear that he felt their very presence in his home to be a violation: this was conveyed by his carriage, almost ludicrously stiff, and by his voice, harsh and vindictively polite. Which figurative language device does Baldwin use to emphasize his father’s frequent lack of control over his intense anger?
Read the excerpt from Notes of a Native Son.That bleakly memorable morning I hated the unbelievable streets and the Negroes and whites who had, equally, made them that way. But I knew that it was folly, as my father would have said, this bitterness was folly. What emerging solution to his problem does Baldwin recognize?
Read the excerpt from Notes from a Native Son.But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one’s own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one’s strength. This fight begins, however, in the heart, and it now had been laid to my charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair.Which best explains the excerpt’s role in the problem-and-solution structure of the passage?
Read the excerpt from Notes of a Native Son.He had lived and died in an intolerable bitterness of spirit and it frightened me, as we drove him to the graveyard through those unquiet, ruined streets, to see how powerful and overflowing this bitterness could be and to realize that this bitterness now was mine. Which best explains Baldwin’s choice to use the word “unquiet” instead of “loud” to describe the streets of Harlem after the race riot?
Which key words in Notes of a Native Son does Baldwin use to convey the oppressive condition of his father’s life due to racial prejudice?
Which best explains why Baldwin uses a problem/solution structure to write about his relationship with his father in Notes of a Native Son?
Read the excerpt from Notes of a Native Son.He was not a young man when we were growing up and he had already suffered many kinds of ruin; in his outrageously demanding and protective way he loved his children, who were black like him and menaced, like him; and all these things sometimes showed in his face when he tried, never to my knowledge with any success, to establish contact with any of us. Which best explains why Baldwin chooses the word “menaced”?
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