An Analysis Of Anne Moody's Coming Of Age In Mississippi

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In the last paragraph on pg. 220 of Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi, she talks about her fears that she has encountered throughout her life. I chose this passage because I felt that it was relevant to the story, because she discussed some of her fears throughout the story and how she might have overcame them. Coming of Age in Mississippi is about the author’s own personal experiences and encounters as an African American girl growing up during the time of segregation and the pre Civil Rights movement. She has faced many hardships as a young child because she was African American, but the one that sort of lead her to fight for her rights, in my opinion, was the death of Emmett Till. “Emmett Till was a young African American boy, fourteen to be exact, and some white men murdered him. …show more content…

219-220). Another theory was that he was flirting with the married woman, and someone told the husband and he ended up killing the young boy. Emmett Till’s death was a huge turning point in her life and she wanted to do something to change what was going on around her. It opened up her eyes and she realized that there was something else she had to be afraid of along with all of the many other things that children are already afraid of. The passage that I am looking at has to deal with the fears that the author discusses she has- “fear of hunger, Hell, the Devil, and fear of dying because she is black” (pg. 220). Anne Moody’s use of word choice and punctuation show that she is more concerned of some fears than others, however, Moody allows the reader to see that power can not control all

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