Don T Let Me Be Lonely Analysis

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely—An Analysis on Forgiveness

Claudia Rankine’s, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, incorporates themes that any one can easily connect with. In her writing, she includes topics such as death, loss, grieving, life, television, race, identity, forgiveness, a hint of hope, and, as the title states, loneliness. Rankine writes in a format that could be considered to be lyric essays or prose poems. Her writing, paired with visual cues, is filled with raw emotion that provides insight into issues that she has personally faced and that many others face on a daily basis. In the book, Rankine questions and even connects some of these topics together. For example, in the book, Rankine contemplates the idea of forgiveness when she writes, “What does it mean to forgive and how does forgiveness show itself?” (pg 47). These are, however, not the only questions she is asking; she also seems to question how we really know if we have forgiven, especially if forgiveness is something that we cannot explain to another person.

When analyzing page 48, a page on forgiveness, Rankine answers her question of “What is forgiveness?” (47), by answering with “Forgiveness, I finally decide, is not the death of amnesia, nor is it a form of madness […] It is a feeling of nothingness that cannot be

Through the analysis of Rankine’s sections on grief and forgiveness, one can conclude that Rankine is actually questioning how one can understand and explain the feeling of forgiveness. She also shows that by letting the problem die from the heart makes it easier for that person to forgive. Finally, through the few sections on grief, one can also find a connection between hope, grief, and forgiveness in which a hopeful individual can more easily, and quickly, grieve, forgive, and move