"Notes of a Native Son."

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James Baldwin, a homosexual African American, the grandson of a slave focuses his writing on his “blackness” and environment (Harlem) in his essay, “Notes of a Native Son.” There are three things that affect Baldwin the most, his race, his prejudice riotous society and the reconciliation with his father that he experiences. The essay concentrates on three important sections or effects; Harlem as a prejudice society, Baldwin’s father’s funeral, and, Baldwin’s blackness and how he deals with his blackness. The funeral day of Baldwin’s father there was mass hysteria in Harlem. Baldwin says,

A few hours after my father’s funeral, while he lay in state in the undertaker’s chapel, a race riot broke out in Harlem. On the morning of the rd of August, we drove my father to the graveyard through a wilderness of smashed plate glass. (Page 5)

The smashed plate glass symbolizes the broken community and broken life that Baldwin’s father led. The tumultuous racial tensions in Harlem never ceased to die even with James Baldwin’s father who was a bitter man. Much like Baldwin’s father’s life his funeral is surrounded by what essentially was wrong with Harlem; the poverty and racial hatred. His father was a very sequestered man. He couldn’t live with white people because of the slavery issue; Baldwin’s grandfather was a slave from New Orleans. Not showing any love for your children caused much despair in the life of Baldwin’s father. There is a schism of love and hate inside his father. Baldwin says,

In my mind’s eye I could see him, sitting at the window, locked up in his terrors; hating and fearing every living soul including his children who had betrayed him, too, by reaching towards the world which had despised him. (Page 54)




This proves that Baldwin’s father was in fact mentally ill and bitter towards everyone and everything including his own family because he was so greatly affected by the poverty and enslavement of his ancestors.

Baldwin cannot escape the racism either. His father taught him how to hate and he knew hatred from his father before he experienced it himself. Baldwin writes so vividly,

She did not ask me what I wanted, but repeated, as though she had learned it somewhere, ‘We don’t serve Negroes here.’ She did not say it with the blunt, derisive hostility to which I had grown so accustomed, but, rather, with a note of apology in her voice, and fear. This made me colder and more murderous than ever. I felt I had to do something with my hands. I wanted her to come close enough for me to get her neck between my hands. (Page 58)

Baldwin, in this particular passage succumbs to his self-conscious demons. Baldwin writes a letter to his nephew James about not falling into this racial trap of hatred. Baldwin does not want James to make the mistakes that he himself had made in the past with whites and his father. For Baldwin never had the opportunity to talk with his father about the future, he regrets this with all of his heart. It was always so hard for him to talk with his father for their relationship “had got on badly.” White people oppress blacks from the Harlem ghetto by not serving them in certain “white” restaurants. This is why Baldwin is so upset with the white waitress in the fashionable restaurant. Baldwin’s upbringing (Harlem) and, the affects of his own father bestowed an immense amount of anger into his mind, body, and soul. Baldwin states, “The principle damage done during the riot of the summer of 14 was to white business establishments in Harlem.” (Page 66) Why to white business establishments? Those businesses had all the money. If you are an impoverished person in general and you have to beg that butcher for the cheapest piece of meat or even for just bones the reader begins to understand and realize why poor, oppressed people revolt and riot. Also according to a widespread tale Baldwin mentions that a black soldier was trying to protect a little black girl when a white cop shot the soldier in the back. This tale magnifies the hate that exists between whites and blacks. Baldwin says, “The effect, in Harlem, of this particular legend was like the effect of a lit match in a tin of gasoline.” (Page 66) This rumor sparked enough chaos in order to riot and revolt against the horrific racial trespasses on blacks. The riots of Harlem and Detroit symbolize the racial atrocities present in Baldwin’s lifetime. How do you bring hope into your life in such a place? How are you supposed to sing your baby a lullaby in such a place of turmoil? Ghetto life was eating away at Baldwin’s entrails for too long. Baldwin’s father tries to instill this pre-conceived notion that white people as an ethnic group are evil and are trying to destroy black people from their rightful society. Baldwin never forgets what his father says; his father has an immense impact on his life. Baldwin explains the situation of black soldiers being drafted into World War II. Blacks fought for their country in segregated divisions. For a person to put his or her life on the line to fight and die for their country there should be no discrimination in doing so, for that is the ultimate sacrifice. Blacks in the 140’s were not seen as equals in America nor on the battlefields. Baldwin is writing about his lifetime which in the grand scheme of things is apart of U.S. history.

Baldwin’s father is a minister whom he never gets to know as a true loving parent. There are few instances where Baldwin can say his father did or said something well for him. His father complimented his brilliant choir boy voice in church, which brought much joy to his father. Baldwin says, “I remembered that he had always been grinning with pleasure when my solos ended.” (Page 64) Indeed his father was proud of his son at one point in his life. For the most part Baldwin’s father was cruel, separated, and hateful. Baldwin’s father drove his family farther and farther away from him. His father was so full of hatred that it consumed him like gangrene which is slow and demoralizing till the day he died. His father had nine children including James whom he could not afford to put food on the table for. How hard and demoralizing that must be to go through for any father. All that Baldwin has so strongly imprinted in his mind about his father is that he told him to never trust white people. Ultimately, his father’s hatred for whites destroys him and causes much anger in his son’s life. Baldwin’s father believes the white man is essentially evil and will do anything in his power to take advantage of the black man. The only white people that Baldwin’s father let into his home were bill collectors and welfare workers. Baldwin’s father is so frustrated with his life that he takes it out on his family.

Baldwin feels the rage that was learned, acquired and, passed down from his father, he let’s loose against his enemy in the fancy restaurant, white people. Baldwin says, “There was nothing on the table but an ordinary water-mug half full of water, and I picked this up and hurled it with all my strength at her. She ducked and it missed her and shattered against the mirror behind the bar.” (Page 58) The horror and real anger against whites that Baldwin possesses is clearly conveyed in this quote, he is fed up with them. His father’s “preaching’s” have finally come out, all that hatred pours out in the restaurant. He wants to show them how black he really is. Baldwin is sick of the white mans’ ignorance. He went so far as to try and choke the white waitress, he could not do so, so from a distance Baldwin threw a half-mug of water at her with the evil intention to do damage. Baldwin comes to the recognition that he was close to killing and being killed in this situation. Baldwin says, “I could not get over two facts, both equally difficult for the imagination to grasp, and one was that I could have been murdered. But the other was that I had been ready to commit murder.” (Page 5) His rage drives him to the brink of destruction. He can not live with all this hatred suppressed inside of him anymore. Baldwin comes to the realization that this hatred is almost inescapable for it has been instilled and apart of his ancestry, “I saw that this had been for my ancestors and now would be for me an awful thing to live with and that the bitterness which had helped to kill my father could also kill me.” (Page 54) He’s talking about the racism, slavery crisis and, poverty that he carries with him like a ball and chain.

When one of Baldwin’s white elementary teachers’ offers to pick him up for the purpose of education, Baldwin’s father says to himself what would this white female teacher want with his young black son? Baldwin says,

Also, since it was a schoolteacher, I imagine that my mother countered the idea of sin with the idea of “education,” which word, even with my father, carried a kind of bitter weight. (Page 55)

This teacher took Baldwin to see “real” plays and further educated him. Baldwin never read the bible because he was forced to read it. Baldwin’s father had been very stubborn and bitter with others. Baldwin’s father asked his son what interest this white female schoolteacher could have in him and in their house. Baldwin had been exposed to good white people but he is so poisoned by the ghetto life of Harlem and his father’s effect it is hard for him to reconcile, until his father’s death and funeral. Baldwin has a profound realization that he arrives at by the time his father has passed. He didn’t know his father until his eulogy. His father’s eulogy didn’t sound anything like the man he really was. Baldwin wishes that his father would’ve been around more so he could’ve had someone to talk to about the future. When his father is dying in the hospital Baldwin says to the reader, “I wanted to take his hand, to say something.” (Page 61) Baldwin is afraid to go and visit him in the hospital because he didn’t want see him dying, that’s the reality. Baldwin loved his father after all the pain he had caused himself and his family. He has sorrow for him when he is dying, laying there like “a little black monkey.” He realizes he had lost something in life and that was sharing time with his father while he was still alive and just talking to him, he never had that in his life nor would he ever have the chance to do so. Through his writing he in someway reconciles the lost relationship between father and son.



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