Notes

Daniel Velasco
Ms.Byrd/Ms.Mann
World lit.
10-5-15
Find Your Voice Analytical Essay
In the story “A party down at the square” by Ralph Ellison, the theme of race is touched on various times. It’s shown by the strong language used in the short story and the hate towards a race. The character uses explicit language and the text shows strong sensory language. In the story the narrator is shown to be very racist because of his word selection, he uses the N word too much and he witnesses a African American getting tortured by the town people.
In the story the narrator got taken to a town hall meeting by his uncle. The environment in the setting is very hostile and tense, everyone is torturing an African American male. In the text it states how the environment was in the setting ,”when we got there everybody was mad and quiet and standing around looking at the nigger some of the men had guns and one man kept goosing the nigger in his pants.” What this quote shows is very explicit, the word choice is very strong and it seems as the narrator is using the n word too much. It demonstrates that the narrator is possible racist or is being influenced by his uncle to be that type of way.
As the story goes on the more violent and racist the place gets, the fire starts catching up to the African American males pants; the young boy is witnessing all this and he is getting a bad image in his head at a young age. In the text it states how the boy was viewing this event; “When I got there, the fire had caught the nigger’s pants, and the folks were standing around watching, but not too close on account of the wind blowing the flames.” The piece of evidence shows how the boy viewed the scene and how the young male was getting burned, the flames started catching up to him. The kid could be getting the wrong idea and think that it is ok to torture people of color or people that are different from the narrator's race. The narrator’s uncle sets a bad example to him, because he is bringing a minor to something that is very strong (content wise). The narrator was getting exposed to a bad image when that event took place (the African american male getting burned).
The experience the narrator witnessed left him traumatized, because at a barbeque the narrator always gets flashbacks of the African American male getting burned in the flames. All that was caused by his uncle; he took him to the gathering and the narrator viewed a lot of strong content for his age. In this piece of textual evidence it proves how the character was left traumatized due to the incident, “Every time I eat barbeque I’ll remember never forget it. Every time I eat barbeque I’ll remember that nigger. His back was just like a barbecued hog.”(paragraph:15) What this quote present is the fact that the narrator was affected mentally by this event it changed his mentality of how he thinks about things now. He wasn’t as racist at the beginning of the story, but now that he saw all of this his mind could’ve changed, his innocence was taken away from him.
Therefore, the theme of race was touched on by the showing of how the character expressed himself and viewed things in this excerpt.