In An Hour Before Daylight, Jimmy Carter reflects upon his life as he grew up in rural Georgia. The memoir highlights the people who helped shape his life while he was attending school and working on his family’s farm. Throughout An Hour Before Daylight, Carter conveys the idea that racism is a learned behavior by utilizing regional dialect, vivid imagery, and unforgettable experiences to create tone and structure that allow the audience to truly understand what it was like to live in the South while segregation still existed.
Within each chapter, Carter uses regional dialect to develop realistic characterizations of people who played a significant role in his upbringing. Continuous use of colloquialism is very effective in conveying his theme since it allows the audience to understand the setting and racially charged culture
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This can be seen in experiences within the memoir where affluent whites use derogatory terms such as “white trash” to describe the impoverished whites in the community (Carter, 20). Carter’s accounts of discrimination, which were strengthened by the inclusion of colloquialism, towards whites and blacks in his town lead the audience to the thought that discrimination and racism are learned actions by individuals in a society in order to maintain class distinctions. All in all, Carter’s recollection of various discriminatory events is effective in creating a tone of disapproval, which he uses to show his scorn for racism.
In the end, An Hour Before Daylight is an autobiography, but it also serves as a platform where former President Carter uses vast examples of colloquialism, realistic depictions, and eventful accounts to prove that racism and bigotry are not concepts that a human is born with, but instead,