When violence and hatred disrupt the flow of our lives, we tend to tell ourselves stories to make them easier to swallow. Given jumbled pieces of evidence, we arrange them like puzzle pieces…into a narrative. We accept petty hatred and prejudice and refuse to let them shape our identity. We simply integrate it with all the other things happening in our lives, like beads on a necklace on a string…but sometimes that's not possible. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Sometimes hatred can be so deeply rooted that it seems impossible to move beyond it. It becomes an immovable object that stands in the way of acceptance and closure. This immovable object was the world into which James Baldwin was born. The hatred that Baldwin tried to understand and combat when writing “Notes of a Native Son” was racism. It was bigotry and truly horrible ignorance. I like to think that writing about the alienation this caused him helped ease some of the pain it created, but it's a naively optimistic sentiment. In order to truly understand the alienation of James Baldwin and where the deadly roots of this problem lie. comes, I think it is necessary to first understand the essay as a whole. “Notes of a Native Son” is an autobiographical essay that James Baldwin wrote about the relationship between him and his stepfather, which he wrote 12 years after his father's death. The essay begins with the death of Baldwin's father in 1943. The funeral took place on Baldwin's birthday, the same day a race riot broke out in Harlem. Baldwin's father was a preacher and a difficult man with a harsh character who had difficulty connecting with others. (this included his son). He died after contracting tuberculosis and refusing to eat, which he was convinced had been poisoned. Baldwin remembers that when he was young, one of his teachers, a white woman, had taken an interest in him and supported him and his family; however, Baldwin's father was reluctant to this arrangement, citing a lack of trust in the teacher and her intentions. This confused young Baldwin at first, but as he grew up he gained some understanding of the reasoning behind these actions. While visiting his father at the height of his illness, Baldwin once again realized that he had been holding on to hatred toward his father in order to avoid facing the pain of losing him. At his father's funeral, Baldwin was estranged from his father and, indeed, from the grieving process... He did not have appropriate funeral clothing, he was suspicious of the preacher conducting the funeral, and was even reluctant to see his father. in his coffin. After the funeral, riots in Harlem began, and Baldwin's reflection and mourning had to be interrupted. His thoughts drifted away from his father and towards his city. At this point in his essay, Baldwin's reflective writings led me to wonder why grief seemed to be the providence of youth. I guess age deepens all feelings. Including grief. And for Baldwin, writing about his father's death several years after the fact must have been a painful memory to unearth. However, Baldwin wasn't worried about these things, he was worried about the state of Harlem, his city. Anger and resentment seeped into the city that shaped Baldwin. In “Notes of a Native Son,” Baldwin describes Harlem as still violent. He described it as a city awaiting a climactic event but.