The story ”The Baddest Dog in Harlem” is written by Walter Dean Myers, the story is a fictional, non-fiction story, the composition is constructed chronologically and it takes place in Harlem. The story shows the readers the story of the black people’s life in Harlem, and what a tough environment they live in. The source is the text “The Baddest Dog in Harlem”
This story is about how the black people lives in the city Harlem, how the police react on a gunman attack. In this story there’s a gunman who’s attacking Harlem, the police officers can’t find the man, but when a group of children saw something move in an apartment the police officers starts shooting into the apartment. In the apartment they killed a dog and a little black boy.
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It is shown in the following quote “They pulled up right in front of us and the cops come out with their guns out. Now, I wasn’t a fool and I know when the police come tearing like that they’re looking for somebody. I did just like everybody else leaning on that rail did, said a quick prayer and put on my innocent face”(Page 16 line 28 - page 17 line 3) The reason why they are used to see the police in their environment is because the police have an extra eye on the black people, there’s a lot of crime and it is often the black people who will be blamed for the crime. Also the way that he describes the situation, makes us think that the police often come to Harlem, and search for bad …show more content…
I think the meanings of these mistakes are that the narrator will show the readers how hard the black people have it in Harlem. The reason to the mistakes might be to show us that the black people are dumb and can’t spell, because there’s so many who doesn’t have a job, and therefore their kids can’t come to school. Otherwise the language might be effected by the common use of slang in the ghetto’s.
When I draw parallels to the text “American skin (41shots) “ It reminds me of the old Mrs. Davis who is really concerned about her son every time there is any kind of crime in Harlem (Page 18 line 20-22). This also appears in “American skin” because Lena is worried about her son going to school. In both texts there are a lot of crime.
“American skin” could refer to the little black kid who was shot by the police, because the text says “41 shots” and “you can get killed just for living” which fits well for the little black kid who got shot in the text “The Baddest Dog in Harlem”
The message in this text, is to show the problem of insulting black people, not only do they have to live with the fear of gangs and gunmen but they also have to live with the prejudices from cops and white people, so I think the message is to show how things really are in the real world, and to stop