Book Review
Introduction
Black Like me is a unique nonfictional book that has the author as the main character. Motivated by the socio-political dynamics John Howard Griffin take a bold but unusual step. He sets out to explore the experience of the Black people, but he could not just find it in books. The central themes to be dealt with in this review include racial profiling by the judicial system and the baseless segregation of the blacks.
John frustration takes him to Mansfield in Texas. Black like me is Griffin’s own story while coexisting with the black community. The book is a thrilling text with a radicalism that tells a story of a man who undergoes medical treatment to change his skin to black in order to infiltrate the black community. John begins a new life as a black man in New Orleans. His first contact Sterling Williams is a soft-spoken shoe shiner. John was expecting oppression, prejudice, and hardship. The cashier refused to cash his check; it was impossible to get a job. There were no comfortable rest rooms where blacks were allowed. John traveled to Deep South to of Alabama and Miscopy. Wherever he went, he met with injustices that seemed to be tolerated by the judicial system. The jury in Mississippi refuses to indict a mob that lynched a black man before he could stand trial. John realizes the black community has been defeated and is hopeless. The black community is segregated and unjustly treated. They have no place in America best social amenities. In Montgomery there is a unique story, the black community is filled with spirits and hopes of changing the current state. Martin Luther King is widely appreciated. The quest for acceptance into the society is high.
Imagery
John employs imagery to articulate his story and usher in themes. He looks into the mirror, and he was scared that he had lost his identity. He tells us what he sees in his image; a free man, imprisoned in the flesh. His words were more of the hypothesis of what he had prepared for. This tool ushers in the theme of captivity in a free world, whatever the skin color can do to a man. For a moment John became black. He was no longer disguising, but he had become part of the black community and had shared in every pain and expectation. John did not talk much about what the black people experienced, but he speaks about what he saw and felt. He at some point even looked at himself in the mirror and saw a disillusioned face. Being a journalist John did write the better part of his story with plain truth.
Symbolism
The use of a mirror although John probably never intended symbolized self-reflection. But John never sees himself in the mirror but a black stranger who never share his history. This was, therefore, symbolic that whatever John was reporting was truly from a black man’s perspective.
Contrast
All through the book, Griffin utilizes the procedure of complexities, always comparing life as a dark man with that as a white. While he stayed with the poor sawmill laborer in rural Alabama, Griffin plays with the sawmill specialist's kids and thinks about their life to that of his kids. "I thought about my girl, Susie, and her fifth birthday today, the candles, the cake and gathering dress; and of my children in their best suits. They rested now in clean beds in a warm house while their dad, an uncovered headed old Negro, sat in the marshes and sobbed, holding it in so he would not stir the Negro kids." As Griffin see-saws amongst high contrast, he takes note of a noticeable difference in the way a dark individual and a white person are dealt with and in the way every perspective the world. As a black man, he sees the world be an unfriendly place. In any case, the dark individuals are benevolent to him. As a white man, he is dealt with compassionate by whites and saw with suspicion in dark neighborhoods.
Allusion
John Griffins Alludes from a famous poem “Dream Variation” by Langston a leading poet of Harlem Renascence. Langman wrote of personal desires; “White day. / Rest at pale evening..Black like me/ (Hughes, Langston 5). Longmans them was the discouragement of racism.
While in camouflage as a dark man, Griffin comes to comprehend the importance of Hughes' sonnet. He composes: "The night was a solace. The vast majority of the whites were in their homes. The danger was less. A Negro mixed subtly into the obscurity. At such a period, the Negro can take a gander at the starlit skies and find that he has, all things considered, a put in the all inclusive request of things. The stars, the dark skies certify his humanity, his legitimacy as an individual. He realizes that his midsection, his lungs, his drained legs, his cravings, his supplications and his psyche are loved in some significant contribution with nature and God.
Griffins' book is entirely unclassical but manages to communicate his thematic concerns. The book is a thrilling experience that emotionally tells the story of a black man “first person narration.” Griffin takes a journalistic approach of the book, and hard evidence is encountered in few places. The book may sound like a fairy tale but own experience and employment of literary tools to demystify the story.
Work sited
Griffin, John Howard. Black like Me. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961. Print.
Hughes, Langston. The dream keeper and other poems. Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2011.
