“A Talk to Teachers” Questions 1-12 1. Baldwin establishes with his audience that he is not a teacher and like all of them lives in a dangerous time. He establishes his ethos by telling his audience that he is not (a teacher) and that he is (a fellow citizen who like them lives in a dangerous time). 2. The crucial paradox created in paragraph two is that society teaches people to see the world through their own eyes and then draw their own conclusions. However, at the same time want citizens who do not think for themselves and instead just comform to the rules of society. 3. In paragraphs three through five Baldwin appeals to pathos when he talks about why African Americans run the risk of becoming schizophrenic, how adults are anxious to …show more content…
By emphasizing his personal experience with, “I still remember my first sight of New York” Baldwin establishes credibility of knowing what he is talking about. 5. Baldwin uses pronouns to shift between the first, second, and third point of view in paragraphs nine and ten in order to show the reader his and the child's point of view. 6. Baldwin views the history of how African Americans were treated in the United States as the employment of blacks for white profit and uses historical events to establish the validity of his argument. 7. Baldwin uses the term nigger in order to emphasize his point that other people do not truly decide who or what he is, they only decide what they think he is. This argument would have been less emotionally effective had he used a less provocative term. 8. Baldwin is saying that the American identity is a false one based on idealized and inaccurate depictions of who their ancestors were. 9. The effect of the short two-sentence paragraph seventeen is to emphasize how without vision America will perish. 10. In the final paragraph Baldwin uses the repetition of “I would,” “those,” and “he” in order to emphasize his point to his targeted audience of teachers at black schools and young African