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Notes Of A Native Son Theme Essay

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11:43 PM Hatred is poison - this is one of the major lessons that James Baldwin was trying to get across in his story "Notes of a Native son." Baldwin's father always had hatred in his heart and no matter what he did, he always seemed angry and mean. He was simply a hateful person. He often lied that he was proud of his blackness, but, in reality, he was mostly humiliated by it. Baldwin's father even struggled to make friends. "His blackness had fixed bleak boundaries to his life" (Baldwin, 63). He generally tried to do all the nice things for his children in an attempt to be a good father, but he somehow always looked like an angry, hateful person. Even playing with his children often ended badly. His children would cry out of fear because of their father's angry looks. When Baldwin's father tried helping one of the children with their homework, they became …show more content…

His father had so much hatred towards white people that he just was an angry person. The hatred continued until the day his father died. After the death of his father, Baldwin was looking at the religious texts that his father had written. Previously, Baldwin had no emotional connection to the texts, but now, suddenly, they had meaing to Baldwin. While walking to burry his father, he began to notice the broken down streets and the mess that was made by both the whites and blacks. Although it hadn't always been clear to him before, he was now seeing the result of unequal treatment of blacks by whites. Because Baldwin knew blacks and whites should have been treated as equals, he understood where his father's anger had come from. Although it hadn't always been there, Baldwin realized that he was beginning to feel the same anger his dad had felt. Hatred, after all, wasn’t just a poison. It was something that helped him understand his father more and realize that he is now like his

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