The Heart of Giving Dick Gregory, in the chapter “Shame” from his autobiography Nigger: An autobiography tells a story from his childhood that influences him and influences how he views others. Gregory was in grade school and the class was collecting money for the chest. The chest was for the low income families, which little Gregory was indeed a part of. Gregory was the one who washed his same clothes day after day. So on this particular day when the teacher went down the roll call to collect everyone’s money, the teacher looked right past Dick Gregory’s name. Like any kid would do, Dick wondered why the teacher skipped his name. He was very eager to find out. He jumped up and down in his seat and finally the teacher took notice and called Dick out by reminding him that he didn’t have a Daddy so he had no money. The point was made. Others don’t need to help to only glorify themselves. This is the case first the human heart is pure hate, second …show more content…
The way people give of their time and their money says a lot about the individual. Whether they do it with a selfish heart or not, nobody knows. It works for a while but giving with a selfish heart the giver will get burned out, simply because their heart isn’t really all in. Then everyone else will know that that person only gave of their time because they had to. They wanted to impress others. They wanted to try to impress God. The motive was wrong and with the wrong motive comes the wrong outcome. There’s really no way to pin point where a person’s heart truly is until you have a meaningful conversation with them and even at that it is still tough to do. In Gregory’s writing, the reader is just making tons of inferences. The diner situation is pretty much straight forward, the reader sees where the giver’s heart is. But the coat situation and the teacher situation, the reader is guessing how Gregory is feeling as the giver and also the