Baldwin Relationships

A detailed Summary of Baldwin Relationships

This story represents the effects of a parent child relationship and how it impacts the child even after the death of his parent.

Baldwin did not know his father very well, mainly because they shared different views about life. His father knew that the world had opportunities but felt they were only for the white person. Baldwin's father was the first generation to be a free man. His father along with thousands migrated to the north after 1919. Baldwin's father experienced first hand what is was like to be a slave and how the white people treated the blacks. This certainly affected how Baldwin's father felt toward the white person. Baldwin, however, did not experience what it was like to be a slave.

Baldwin and his father never really connected as father and son. His father was a harsh man which made his son afraid to approach him.

Baldwin says, "When he took one of his children on his knee to play, the child always became fretful and began to cry; when he tried to help one of us with our homework the absolutely unabating tension which emanated from his caused our minds and our tongues to become paralyzed, so that he, scarcely knowing why, flew into a rage and the child, not knowing why, was punished." (53)

Baldwin's realization of this is expressed when Baldwin says "All of my father's texts and songs, which I had decided were meaningless, were arranged before me at his death like empty bottles, waiting to hold the meaning which life would give them for me." (67)

Baldwin says, "It was, perhaps, like feeling that the most dangerous part of a dangerous journey had been passed and that now, even if death should come, it would come with honor and without the complicity of their countrymen. Such a death would be, in short, a fact with which one could hope to live." (61)

passage shows how Baldwin and his siblings were scared to be around their father. There was so much anger built up inside their father that whenever he would try to help one his children, they would become frightened and too scared to say or do anything, and that made their father even madder. Baldwin was afraid to have any of his friends over to his house because his father was mean to them. Baldwin's father would tell his friends that they were in a league with the devil and intended to rob them. When his father did this it made Baldwin hate his father and not want to be around him. Baldwin's father hated and feared most people he met. This fear and hatred even went towards his children which is why his father never developed any relationships with his children.

Baldwin's father's funeral impacted the way Baldwin felt about his father because it made him think about his father in a different way. At the end of Baldwin's essay his feelings towards his father changes.

Baldwin says, "Then someone began singing one of my father's favorite songs and, abruptly, I was with him, sitting on his knee, in the hot, enormous, crowded church which was the first church we attended...I had forgotten, in the rage of my growing up, how proud m y father had been of me when I was little."(64)

Some common words found in the essay are:
War II, , Negroes Baldwin, baldwin's father, white people, America Baldwin's, baldwin father, father baldwin's, feelings towards father, World War, world war ii, world war, towards father, war ii, white person, father mean, father harsh,

Approximate Word count = 1314
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: People