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Malcolm X Chapter Summary

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X’s purpose in his autobiography is to display how his life’s events led him to become the man he is well known as, as well as show the reader the crisis in America he has worked to destroy. X establishes the basis for his ideals as well as his childhood in chapter 1. He begins by describing how his family has been terrorized by racists since before he was born. His father had been murdered, his home was burnt down, his mother and father fought constantly, and his mother was driven crazy by insurance agents. All these events put together are the reason this chapter is called Nightmare, as Xs’ childhood was filled with conflict and torment. This creates a foundation for Xs’ extreme views on African-Americans and race. For chapter …show more content…

However, when X is caught, he voluntarily gives up his gun and surrender to the detectives instead of attacking them. This shows X still retains some sense of intuition and smarts. X adapts into an educated, religious intuitive individual, and begins to show many more of the traits he is well-known for between chapter 10 and 11. He begins with a severe atheistic attitude that gets him the nickname “Satan”. When Reginald hints at Islam to X, however, X becomes curious, as well as thoughtful. This seen when he speaks to Bimbi, renounces pork, and stops his atheistic rants. When Reginald tells X that the “white man is the devil”, Xs’ mind files through all the white people he has known in his life, and he comes to a sort of revelation. X states that “Not for weeks yet would I deal with the direct, personal application to myself, as a black man, of the truth. It was still like a blinding light” (pg. 167). X is further changed in chapter 11 where he spends most of his time reading of history, preparing debates, improving his handwriting, and educating himself. X states that; “You couldn’t have gotten me out of books with a wedge” (pg. 176). This all shows a complete transformation of X, from a

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119 Words | 1 Pages

In Three Day Road, Xavier is exposed to slow violence by cultural and emotional conflict throughout the war, which resulted in post-traumatic stress. Xavier is a remorseful character because of how he was brought up. Regardless of his role in the war, he feels remorse every time he kills. His beliefs do not change. He does not compromise his beliefs over the expectation to hate the enemy or in the company of Elijah who evidently has compromised his prior beliefs.

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378 Words | 2 Pages

In this passage Malcolm X addressed the narrating “I” to address the audience of the autobiography, and he explains to them why he put forward the “sordid” details of his younger years as well as tells the read why he made the decision to spend so much time writing a book at all. This passage shows the reader the important themes that Malcolm X aims to put forward in the book, and that is the theme of race and racism in addition to the theme of religion. The theme of race is present when he says, “I had sunk to the very bottom of American white man’s society.” This quote tells the reader that Malcolm X has aimed, and still aims, to show how American society puts the white man at power, and the African-American man below him. Then the theme

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1072 Words | 5 Pages

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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305 Words | 2 Pages

“Learning to Read”, by Malcolm X reveals that he had a reading and writing problem. Malcolm X wanted to get the attention of Elijah Muhammad, but did not have the skills to write to him through letter while he was in jail. Muhammad was a religious leader and all Malcolm X knew was his street slang. Malcolm X was frustrated that he cannot express his thoughts through letter, because he didn’t know how. He decided while he was in jail to learn how to write and read, by copying the dictionary.

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971 Words | 4 Pages

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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679 Words | 3 Pages

X also goes on about how it is not the white man who is evil, but the collective white man that has been evil. This shows a change in Xs’ ideals and builds upon the idea of integration vs. separation. He sees integration as possible, but still stands by the idea

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494 Words | 2 Pages

Many people forget that African Americans in this country have been enslaved for longer than they have been free. Coates reminds his son to not forget their important history and that they will continuously struggle for freedom over their own bodies. They must learn to live within a black body. These struggles can be seen in the racial profiling and brutality among police officers in cases such as Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and countless of others. He goes on to describe his childhood and how fear was the root of black existence.

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932 Words | 4 Pages

The final scene of the film includes a depiction of the assassination of Malcolm X, and through a necessarily mediated redacted history, attempts to openly address the problems and trauma of the histoical world. Lee works to readjust and resituate spectator assumptions and expectations through constructed filmmaking, which Manthia Diawara says is necessary for spectator engagement. Set at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, the speech was scheduled to be delivered to the Organization of Afro-American Unity, on February 21, 1965. As a function of fairly representing the events surrounding and including the assassination, director Spike Lee attempts to maintain narrative balance in lifting written words to visual image, as he uses redacted history to sway his audience.

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543 Words | 3 Pages

Due to Malcolm X’s struggles in his early life, he dealt with an internal anger and resentment towards the white race, which lead to him rebelling and acting out. When Malcolm X was only 6 years old, criminals murdered his father and sparked an internal flame of hatred. His anger convinced him to commit various crimes such as stealing. This acted as a way to rebel against his family and the white community; he would not accept going unnoticed, nor would he accept others as they treated him as inferior. Not only did young Malcolm steal, but he also fought frequently with his family members.

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946 Words | 4 Pages

Hence, they crave peer acceptance in both, receiving genuine approval from neither” (West 139). Another renowned description of this phenomenon by Malcolm X is a metaphor stating that there are two kinds of slaves, the house negro and the field negro. Malcolm says that the house negroes love and protect the white master while field negroes hate and resist him, while this rhetorical device can be useful in highlighting differences amongst black people it’s a broad over generalization, and plain negligence to try and fit a black person in one of the two categories. Nevertheless, Malcolm creates a clear analysis of the issue of double-consciousness, showing that he understands the complexity of the matter at hand and that he is knowledgeable on the subject, hence utilizing ethos. While Malcolm X strongly believes that “black self-love and black self-determination [will make black people] free of the tension generated by ‘double-consciousness’”

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337 Words | 2 Pages

Though he is still seen as a controversial figure, I believe that Malcolm X was one of the most compassionate figures in history. He once said, “I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color.” I really admire how he fought for what he believed in. Initially, I learned about Malcolm X in my AP English Language class, but I was reintroduced to his influence on the modern day black society in my college history class. Prior to being reintroduced to his philosophy in my college history class, I thought that X was a violent, racist man.

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456 Words | 2 Pages

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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535 Words | 3 Pages

This quote means that he is now able to understand things he had never understood before. Also, the fact of being focused and concentrated on reading and understanding books made him completely forget about the time he was spending in prison because he was connected to the external

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907 Words | 4 Pages

He discharges ideas by other psychiatrists that would solve the neurosis of an individual Black man by asking him to adjust his expectations and face reality. Instead, he wants social solutions that transform the racist society that produced conditions of inequality, to begin with. Black people need to be stimulated to transform the society by challenging individuals from white people, declaring freedom, and building a future freed from the suppression of the

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717 Words | 3 Pages

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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