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Between The World And Me Rhetorical Analysis

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Rhetorical Analysis Author Ta-Nehisi Coates in his book Between the World and Me discusses impactful racial issues in American history and educates his son on the past and current realities of being a black American. At the beginning of the book, Coates imposes the question: “How do I live freely in this black body?” (Coates 12). Although he believes that this question is unanswerable, Coates’ purpose is to express his deepest concerns for his son and to help him understand his personal experiences as a black man. He achieves his purpose by incorporating rhetorical skills such as ethos, pathos, and logos. Coates has been a successful journalist and writer for several years. He previously worked for The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and O …show more content…

Anaphora: “Here there were African drummers assembling in Union Square. Here there were dead office towers, brought to life at night by restaurants buried within that served small kegs of beer and Korean fried chicken. Here there were black girls with white boys, and black boys with Chinese-American girls, and Chinese-American girls with Dominican boys, and Dominican boys with Jamaican boys and every other imaginable combination” (Coates 92). 5. Anaphora: “I did not die in my aimless youth. I did not perish in the agony of not knowing” (Coates 129). 6. Allusion: “Our current politics tell you that should you fall victim to such an assault and lose your body, it somehow must be your fault. Trayvon Martin’s hoodie got him killed. Jordan Davis’ loud music did the same. John Crawford should never have touched the rifle on display. Kajieme Powell should have known not to be crazy” (Coates 130). 7. Epistrophe: “Think of your mother, who had no father. And your grandmother, who was abandoned by her father. And your grandfather, who was left behind by his father” (Page 82). 8. Personification: “But now your mother had gone and done it, and when she returned her eyes were dancing with all the possibilities out there, not just for her but for you and for me” (Coates

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Coat’s perspective on the incident of the death of Trayvon Martin is explained in a sarcastic way, showing that Obama is avoiding the racial conflict. “Part of Obama’s genius is a remarkable ability

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Coates want the American to be aware of America’s history and the racial oppression and how the mistreat black populations has played in making America the country it is today. However America has claimed otherwise, that the black populations did not play a crucial role in America. Ta-Nehisi Coates contends, that the leads

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He depicts how people just glaze over them as if they had done something to deserve it. As Ta-Nehisi Coates recounts his childhood, He entails how there would be no question about the murders of young black people. He tells the tale of how officers of the law destroyed your body and were faced with no consequences when he

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“Coates goes for that audience’s throat. He wants them to feel the strangulation of struggle, to rob them of breath for one heartbeat longer than is comfortable.” (Two texts) Coates' rhetoric is overpowering. He evokes an emotional reaction from his readers by forcing them to look through his eyes and see the injustices against black people as a victim and not a third party observer.

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Coates states “What i told you is what your grandparents tried to tell me: that this is your country, that this is your world, that this is your body, and you must find some way to live within all of it” He uses parallelism when he utters “that this is your country, that this is your world, that this is your body” and is showing his son that some of the situations going on now, were going on then. He is articulating that everything is yours and you have to figure out how to live with it. “When I was your age the only people I knew were black, and all of them were powerfully, adamantly, dangerously afraid.” He uses asyndetons, when he states “powerfully, adamantly, dangerously” to characterize the fate of fear in blacks when he was growing up.

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Jerrione Mosley In the book Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes a letter to his son revealing the reality of life, growing up as a black man. Coates mostly focused on how black lives and bodies lacked value in America and could be possibly destroyed or taken away at any time. He also talked about “The Dream”, which is the ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative. The lack of values and importance for the black race is highly in effect.

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In 2015, The Atlantic Magazine published a article written by racial activist, Ta-Nehisi Coates who presented, “Letter To Son, to address black men about social injustice in America, and how the opportunities differ based on race. His goal was to make an emotional appeal to black men to get them to understand that they aren’t the privileged ones, and he also wanted to make the privileged individuals feel ashamed of how they mistreat and make the society look down on the minority of black men. In the article, Coates states his experiences and emphasizes the mistreatment of blacks and he refers back to slave to derive a ample amount of anger out of blacks. Within the text, Coates uses a repetition of words to explain that in society, black individuals are usually viewed as lower class which means they aren’t equal with the majority.

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Payton Ike Perine English 10 Hon 22 February 2023 Disintegration of the black body in America American writer and activist, Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates, attempts to address the issues that have plagued him his entire life in the article titled "Letter to My Son," in which he writes a letter to his 15-year-old son Samori Toure. The letter explains what it means to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it in the United States. After 150 years since the end of the Civil War and ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, he dissects the story of America's most immense movement, in a time when African Americans are viewed as inferior due to the color of their skin. Coates recounts different times in his own life when his innocence was lost, his internal sense of terror was threatened, and a wall of rage was erected around him. Throughout the use of syntax, figurative language, ethos, and pathos,

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Honesty is essential in the quest for freedom. In Between the World and Me, Coates tells his son the truth, without fear, without repression, and without appeasement. Coates doesn’t write as a spokesperson for the black community, but he writes knowing that he will be a spokesperson not matter where he is or what he does. This a reality black people must deal with every day. Coates uses the language he does not because of the fact that it will be read as more than his words, but because they are his words regardless.

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He has knowledge that his son will grow up privileged, well educated with good behavior, however, he does not want him to fall victim to the dream life. Coates does not want to limit his son in any way, but as a father who himself has experienced this fraught history of unfair social justice and vulnerability of his black body. Coats also take focus in on the Civil war, which is one of the main themes of Between you and Me that is an honest accounting of the history of the United States. The Civil War, in particular, has been subject to a softening, a blurring, and a manipulation of its brutal truths. Reconstruction did not bring the nation together racially, and the years following the war laid the groundwork for the Dream and for the ways in which the country would maintain its racial separation without the actual presence of slavery.

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He first asks, from the African Americans’ perspective, “what need of education, since we must always cook and serve?” followed by, from the white’s perspective, “what need of higher culture for half-men?” The effect of this rhetorical questioning is that the reader sees the effect that prejudice has on African Americans—they lose hope and are degraded by

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Coates is frequently lauded as one of America’s most important writers on the subject of race today, but this in fact undersells him: Coates is one of America’s most important writers on the subject of America today. This distinction might sound glib but is worth making, not least of all because Coates repeatedly informs us that he isn’t much interested in “race” as a subject of reflection in itself. “Race is the child of racism, not the father,” he writes—while race is a fiction of power, racism is power itself, and very

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Superman and Me is an inspirational and moving passage that effectively uses rhetoric to develop a strong story of an indian boy who used reading to overcome the stereotype of being expected to fail. Sherman Alexie, the author, was a poor young Indian boy living on a reservation his dad loved reading so his house was filled with books and he loved reading books this passage explains how reading saved his life. Sherman uses ethos, pathos, and rhetorical strategies such as hyperbole, anaphora, tone shift, parallelism, and zeugma. Sherman Alexie strongly uses strong ethos to develop his argument. In the background paragraph Sherman uses ethos.

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