Preview

Examples Of Imagery In Malcolm X

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
464 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Examples Of Imagery In Malcolm X
Many elements of form used in this piece of literature is Imagery of sight. This is so the reader could get a vivid mental image that deepens the readers understanding of that exact scene. When Malcolm X was brutally assassinated the author used imagery to help the reader fully realize the perspective of what is happening. The author says “Then the other hand flew up. The middle finger of the left hand was bullet-shattered, and blood gushed from his goatee. He clutched his chest. His big body suddenly fell back stiffly, knocking over two chairs; his head struck the stage floor with a thud” (443). This enables the reader with a vivid picture of what Malcolm had looked like at the time.
Another element of form in this autobiography is foil. Foil is a minor character that sheds light or contracts on the protagonist, in this case Malcolm. While in prison Malcolm’s younger brother, Reginald
…show more content…
When growing up Malcolm and his family had been the target of society ever since he was born. When Malcolm a child his families first house was burned down while they were inside. This had tugged on the reader’s emotions which had made the readers feel a sort of sympathy for him and his family. He explains his story: “I remember being suddenly snatched awake into a frightening confusion of pistol shots and shouting and smoke and flames. My father had shouted and shot at the two white men who had set the fire and were running away. Our home was burning down around us. We were lunging and bumping and tumbling all over each other trying to escape…I remember we were outside in the night in our underwear, crying and yelling our heads off. The white police and firemen came and stood around watching as the house burned to the ground” (3). This allows the author to link back to the purpose of how the “white town” had torn this family apart which develops into Malcolm’s strong beliefs of fighting or rights of African

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Purpose: The purpose was to have Malcolm X tell his story and where he came from. This was for people who follow him and his life closely and would like to get an idea on how he thinks. He was telling people about the questions or concerns he has with the world. He is giving out his opinion in this book.…

    • 1731 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Serving his ten year sentence in a state prison Malcolm X encounters a religious teacher named Baines (Albert Hall) who provided knowledge on Islamic beliefs. He too was a manipulator. He taught Malcolm X not to have self-hatred in exchange for hate people of Caucasian descent. For instance, in one scene Baines interrupts Malcolm X in the shower as he is using his lye straightening products. Baines offers Malcolm X a drink, which is similar to a drug to get him high. Baines does this because he known this is the only way Malcolm will speak with him. He actually even states it to Malcolm in the scene. This was a manipulation tactic similar to the one used by Archie in the bar scene. Baines becomes the connection between Malcolm X and Elijah…

    • 244 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Summary Of My First Conk

    • 254 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Malcolm X writes about his experience as a young boy, wanting to be like the people around him. During the time period this short story, My First Conk was written, racism was very much alive. There is a short paragraph written about the author before the actual short story. This section reveals some of the background of Malcolm X. His entire family was targeted for the color of their skin. Back then, the ‘normal’ people were people with white skin.…

    • 254 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    CompareContrastEssay

    • 462 Words
    • 2 Pages

    After the death of her father, Norris struggle to understand her parents. She painstakingly tracks down police records, pores over military documents and interviews her father's contemporaries to find the truth in family lore. For Malcolm X, he was being split from his brother and sister and sent to various foster homes and orphanages. He started to steal thing,do drugs and got arrested. Malcolm’s experience of racial prejudice from both white and black people shows the extent to which racism is ingrained in society.…

    • 462 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    over time Malcolm X's views on how to handle conflict changed; his violent retaliation eased up after converting to Islam. Yet, Dr. King's views never faltered: never resorting to violence. In comparison, the characters of this film made similar changes as well. Although Mookie parallels tactics of Dr. King, towards the end of the film his action of throwing a garbage can into Sal's storefront resembles tactics of Malcolm X. This fluctuation in Mookie's tactics further strengthens the concept that racial and social conflict can be complex and fluctuate at…

    • 91 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Malcolm Little was born to a mixed race mother, Louise Little, and a black father, Earl Little, a Baptist minister. An outspoken supporter of Pan-African activist Marcus Garvey, this was believed to have caused Earl’s murder by white supremacists in 1931. The significance of Earl’s murder is often totally and inexplicably overlooked: it should never be forgotten that the causes for which Malcolm would later fight were those exact causes for which his father had died.…

    • 2009 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Malcolm X was a brave, ambitious civil rights leader. He fought against racism and brought hope to African-Americans. Malcolm X changed African-Americans by giving them hope and freedom.…

    • 423 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “I remember being suddenly snatched awake into a frightening confusion of pistol shots and shouting and smoke and flames” (Page. 3), Malcolm explains this night in 1929 as his earliest vivid memory when he was only 4 years old. His father was there at the time, and the white men burnt their house down. “We were lunging and bumping and tumbling all over each other trying to escape” (Page. 3), after Malcolm’s family moved to the outskirts of Lansing, he basically moved every…

    • 650 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Malcolm Little's Struggle

    • 432 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Malcolm Little (his birth name) had a rough start in the world, but he never let that stop him from achieving his goal to make a difference. Growing up Malcolm’s mother Louise was caucasian and his father Earl was african american, so that was quite an awakening mix to some community members. Earl Little was a baptist minister and a supporter of Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey. Malcolm’s father had many threats towards him and his family which caused the to relocate a numerous amount of times. After their final relocating Malcolm’s Michigan house was burned to the ground by a group the Black Legion members. Two years after the house fire they had found Malcolm’s father’s body lying by the town’s train tracks. The police ruled the murder…

    • 432 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    lollipop from a black child, at which point the black child stops crying and goes out to fight the white boy), and they will then proceed to keep rising up against those white people until they have absolutely nothing, and have learned a lesson to never mess with any black people ever again (in the article, the black child beats the white child to “within an inch of his ass-cracker life”). This exaggerates Malcolm X’s real words, which were more to the effect of “By any means necessary”, in order to achieve humour. However, the article does not only make fun of Malcolm X. The final paragraph is supposed to be a quote of what the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover at the time of the event said about the speech: “…it would appear that, after four centuries of abuse, broken promises and subjugation, American negroes are not only dissatisfied; they’re starting to get really angry.” This statement accuses white Americans of being ignorant towards the struggle for racial equality between them and African-Americans, as well as to why they are rising up.…

    • 517 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    homemade education

    • 279 Words
    • 1 Page

    Analysis: Malcolm X seperates this story into 3 seperate portions, that all seem to play off each other. He begins with how he taugh himself to read and write in prison by using tablets and a dictionary and wrote from every night. This part was important, because as he states; he doesn't, "think anybody ever got more out of going to prison than he did" (203). In the next part Malcolm X begins to explain how he became interested in the part of history that white men left out. The history of minorites interests him greatly, and he begins to read more and more to fully understand these topics. He talks about some of these happenings in history, and his strong feelings about them. The last part of his story is Malcolm X reflecting back on how much he owed to his time in prison, and exactly what that gave him. He states, "I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me" (202). He also calls books his alma mater, showing how he owes everything he knows to those…

    • 279 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Only when he decides to pursue an interest in texts on black history and slavery does he begin to piece the puzzle together, comprehending the necessity of similar literacy among black people, as well as the other minorities of the world. He uncovers the truth; and not just “slavery’s total horror,” but also how the “world’s collective white man had acted like a devil in virtually every contact he had with the world’s collective non-white man” throughout history (5). Due to the wicked procedures of the race, Malcolm X deduces the white man to be “nothing but a piratical opportunist who used Faustian machinations to make his own Christianity his initial wedge in criminal conquests” (4). Embracing the harsh reality with which he “attacked [his] ignorance,” Malcolm X stands behind the idea that the black man needs to “start thinking of himself as one of the world’s great peoples” (6). Unlike Douglass, who saw knowledge as a way for the black man to become equal to the white man, Malcolm X takes an interest in black separatism, a philosophy that will ultimately divide the white and black institutions.…

    • 1353 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Malcolm X

    • 1697 Words
    • 7 Pages

    2. After reading the passage, I think the words rehabilitation (P. 212), articulate (P.210), whitened (P. 213), degrade (P. 215) and narcotize (P.216) are important to the passage. These vocabularies have made the tone critical. Malcolm used “degrade”, “whitened” and “narcotize” when writing about the white races. These words were with negative meanings. In the other hand, I think the word “articulate” is quite important since Malcolm had mentioned it for few times in the beginning. The intention of reading to him was to become articulate, this is the ultimate aim of Malcolm, that’s why I think it is important.…

    • 1697 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Malcolm X Research Paper

    • 1127 Words
    • 5 Pages

    of his time that not all whites were racist and that there were many who…

    • 1127 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Malcolm X

    • 459 Words
    • 2 Pages

    you can depend on him to tell it like it is and to give whitey hell.…

    • 459 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays

Related Topics