Personal Narrative: Life In Yale, By James Baldwin

As a working class young man Danny goes into Yale, which is something not very usual from someone with his background. He is from New Jersey and his parents are not wealthy. Even though all of this is against him he has been able to overcome all of the obstacles and worked hard enough to get him in Yale. Being in Yale is not easy and going back and forth from his house and Yale is hard as well. Both settings are so different from each other and provide different things for Danny. Danny lives in two different worlds; Yale and New Jersey; he feels that he fits in in both environments, but at same time he feels that he does not belong to any of them. Danny is constantly moving back and forth from New Jersey and New Haven. He was born and raised
Times were he felt like an alien in his own hometown. Having him express this words, “What I needed was distraction, diversion, a cold beer, and someone to talk to. But I couldn’t think of anyone in the immediate vicinity I wanted to call, anyplace I wanted to go (p.170).” Going back home where he had no friends at the time and no distraction besides riding the food truck was a hard thing for Danny. He went home for vacations and what he wanted the most was to enjoy them somewhere else, but that was not possible for him. He expressed his desires as, “I would much rather have been in Manhattan or Washington D.C., interning for a magazine or a congressman, but nothing had come through that paid enough to make either plan ever remotely plausible (p.18).” They were far from his reality which was working in his hometown driving his father’s food truck, the Roach Coach. Even though he did not like it this was the only option he had. His father was not in a good condition during the summer to work all day every day, therefore Danny had to help him. This was something that did not make him excited or comfortable from being home, “God knows I hadn’t wanted to spend the summer riding shotgun in the Roach Coach, selling plastic-wrapped danishes to tired-looking factory workers” (p.18). This was how Danny felt about the whole job situation back home. In addition, that summer Danny did not have any girls around
He came from a hard working class home where he was a hard worker even though his young age. So going through this transition was not easy at all. He was not prepared to the different things he was going to see and experience at school. As he said, “I’d been totally unprepared for the centrality of singing groups to campus life” (p. 7). The Whiffenpoofs, a singing group, was one of the many things Danny was not prepared for. He was amazed how they devote so much time to singing. While living near some of the members of the group he was startled to see how the group consumed so much of their lives. Living with roommates was a new thing too, but he got used to it quickly. Sometimes Max crashed in his bed, but Danny knew what to say for him to leave. His room was a sanctuary as in to do homework, no more action than that happened, there was no other place where he could concentrate on his work. He stated, “unlike most of my friends who claimed they couldn’t get any work done in their rooms, I found it impossible to work anywhere else” (p. 15). There were too many distractions for him outside his room. Moreover, his roommates’ backgrounds were very different from his. Their parents were well known, well studied, and rich people. This was something to which Danny could not relate to because his parents have never been able to own most of the things the