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Analysis: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X Writing Style

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Summer Writing Assignment Lindsay Harris 8/30/15 Ap Lang Autobiography of Malcolm X Writing Style Alex Haley author of the Autobiography of Malcolm X uses several literary devices to create the tone of his writing. The writer has a very laid back style of writing and the structure is relatively loose. The autobiography is written by telling the story of his life through major events and turning points of his life in chronological order. The authors tone of writing could at first be described as easygoing and unconcerned. He is aware of the obvious issue of racism and discrimination against African Americans, but feels as if it doesn't directly apply to him. As he grows up the style of the writing becomes even more laid back to fit Malcolm's nonchalant personality. The author commonly uses the slang used in the 1940’s. The Author makes a point of stating all the terms Malcolm used to be …show more content…

I met chicks who were fine as May wine, and cats who were hip to all happenings. That paragraph is deliberate, of course; it's just to display a bit more of the slang that was used by everyone I respected as "hip" in those days. And in no time at all, I was talking the slang like a lifelong hipster.” (4.1) The author writes with a loose structure as he jumps back to important memories. Malcolm often had flashbacks to his troubled past. He has a serious tone when describing the way his family was split up and the way his mother was treated. It is the only thing he seems to be serious about and is his only tender spot. When Malcolm is around his family he speaks as if he is the troubled sibling that amounted to nothing.The author's tone quickly softens up and changes to sound more advising as Malcolm tries to be an advocate for his younger brother, Reginald. The author writes in short choppy sentences to show Malcolm's lack of well sentence structure. The sentence structure is

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Sample Body Paragraph 1 Focusing our mind on a simple task can inspire us. Malcolm X is a figure who illustrates this idea. He dedicated himself to educating himself and learning how to read in prison. He spent countless hours of undistracted study, carefully copying words from the dictionary to improve his vocabulary and handwriting.

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Thesis: In “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, Malcolm X in his telling of his life to Alex Haley uncovers the theme of positive and negative environments unearthed by the interaction of African Americans and White Americans in his life and what those kinds of environments inherently produce. Annotated Bibliography Nelson, Emmanuel S. Ethnic American Literature: an Encyclopedia for Students. Greenwood, An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2015.This encyclopedia points out that the negative interaction he held with the white man as a young hustler was countered by these same experiences pushing Malcolm X to reclaim his “African identity”. This shows, as described by the cited work, what a man pushed by his negative interactions with the oppressive white men is willing to do to find his identity (i.e. through hustling).

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Throughout the Autobiography of Malcolm X there are several key events the bring out the central ideas of the text. Some examples of the key events was when Mr. Ostrowski lectured Malcolm, when Malcolm was in jail and he learned the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, and when Malcolm made his pilgrimage to Mecca. A closer look at the central ideas would show that they build on one another. When Malcolm was going to school his teacher, Mr. Ostrowski, told home to give up his dream of being a lawyer,” Malcolm, one of life’s first needs is to be realistic.

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Education is Power The Civil Rights Movement took place during the mid-1950s and late 1960s where African Americans protested against the injustice of not receiving the same civil liberties as white Americans. Activists who took part in the Civil Rights Movement, used a non-violent approach to protesting such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Greensboro sit-ins, and the march from Selma to Montgomery in order to bring about equality. African Americans began to receive equality as shown by the implementation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. In Malcolm X’s, “Learning to Read”, he encourages his audience to learn from his mistakes through stories of his background that reflect his beliefs that under-educated people need to become aware of the less than positive history of the oppression of African Americans if they plan on attaining their freedom.

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Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and the Civil Rights Struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. A Brief History with Documents written by David Howard-Pitney is a great history book that gives us an entry into two important American thinkers and a tumultuous part of American history. This 207-pages book was published by Bedford/St. Martin’s in Boston, New York on February 20, 2004. David Howard-Pitney worked at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University in 1986, and that made him a specialist on American civil religion and African-American leaders ' thought and rhetoric (208). Another publication of Howard-Pitney is The African-American Jeremiad: Appeals for Justice in America.

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Malcolm X 's "A Homemade Education" uncovers a story of how he gained knowledge by himself and how it guided his thoughts and ideas in becoming a more knowledgeable speaker. Although Malcolm X is a very outspoken person about racism in the United States and throughout the world, he had the right to be upset but goes a little overboard on blaming whites. The main focus of "A Homemade Education" by Malcolm X is his endless attempt to increase his knowledge by teaching himself how to fully understand different words of the dictionary. Although he was inspired by a fellow inmate when he was in Charlestown Prison, Malcolm, young as he was back then, began reading intensely but couldn’t understand exactly what he was reading because of his writing and reading skills. Starting from being illiterate, Malcolm X used every resource he had to broaden his language abilities and be able to communicate to the world and his people.

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As the years went by, Malcolm continued down the wrong path, filled with crime and pain. Due to the racial hate that followed him, he could never be seen as an equal. The government imprisoned him multiple times for his crimes and this added to his depression. He desperately tried to change the way society looked upon him, but eventually he looked to crimes and rebellion in order to

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The book* kept very loyal to the character of Malcolm X, even though he was only mentioned in a conversation. They described him as a radical speaker in the civil rights movement. The characters spoke about him like that weird kid in the class that nobody talks to**, like he was a person the did not want to follow, instead trying to bring Martin Luther King Jr. to their town to hold a protest. In other words, like people in the real world thought about him.

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In “Learning to Read”, Malcolm X uses rhetorical analysis to argue how African Americans continued to struggle in gaining education due to racism. He informs people that through our history books, there have been modifications that restrain the truth about the struggles black people faced. Malcolm X encouraged his audience to strive to get the rights that they deserved. He demonstrates that knowledge is very important because the truth empowers us. In his interview he persuades his audience with diction, tone, pathos, ethos, and appeal to emotion to make his point.

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Analysis for Learning to Read by Malcolm X Malcolm X, who used X to signify his lost African tribal name, was an American Muslim minister and a human rights activist. He stated in his excerpt “Learning to Read” from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, “[People] will think I went to school far beyond the eighth grade” (Learning to read, X,3). Malcolm X was kicked out of the school after 8th grade, and went to the prison. He learned how to read in the prison. Ever since then, he started to read books and think about the fate of black people’s.

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Malcolm X's "Literacy Behind Bars" is about the expansion of his world that provokes a burning passion within himself through the world of reading. While incarcerated, the author meets a man named Bimbi who leads the discussion with his stock of knowledge, prompting Malcolm X to further his skills in literacy. Taking small steps, he first broadens his vocabulary by reading alphabetically in the dictionary and copying pages. He reads aloud to himself until the words begin to stick with him. Not long after moves onto books, devouring them at a relentless pace, Malcolm X became so engrossed with reading that he begins breaking curfew rules just to continue reading by using the light outside of his cell.

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Learning to read by Malcolm X is an autobiographical piece describing his self-education. Malcom describes being “Increasingly frustrated. At not being able to express what I(He) wanted to convey in letters.” This gave him the drive to learn to read and write during his time in Charlestown Prison, and Norfolk Prison. He started his self-education by reading books, piecing together the bits that he could understand using context to complete sentences he could not comprehend.

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a. Explain the process by which the author improved his reading and writing abilities. The process by which the author improved his reading and writing abilities begins when he is in prison. At first, he studied in prison under the teaching of Mr. Elijah Muhammad, and he wrote letters to people, whom he knows in the outside world. After these letters were sent, he found out that it was difficult for him to express his feelings because of the lack of vocabulary.

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Summary of "Learning to Read" by Malcolm X In his essay "Learning to Read" from the chapter "Saved" in Malcolm's Autobiography published in New York (Grove Press, 1965). Malcolm was born in Omaha, Nebraska and his father was a political activist on behalf of Marcus Garvey. After he and his family moved to East Lansing, Michigan, where his father was killed and his mother placed in a mental institution. he became an orphan and ended up on the streets of Detroit where he was known as "Detroit Red".

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Introduction: Malcom X urges the Negro community to fight to gain the equal rights they deserve by taking action against their white oppressors. He emphasizes that blacks will gain their rights either thorough voting, with the ballot, or else through the inevitable violence with the bullet. Thesis [part a] Like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., also fighting for the civil rights of black Americans in the 1960s, but in a more peaceful manner, Malcom X takes a different approach.

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