Between The World And Me Rhetorical Analysis

Improved Essays
Excerpt from Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates Summary + Rhetorical Analysis #1
The following essay being summarized and analyzed, an excerpt from Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates was originally published on July 14, 2015. This essay is a message to Coates’s son as well a piece that chronicles an interview that Coates participated in involving the opression of African Americans throughought the history of the United States. Along with a description of the interview, Coates gives a critical analysis of the theme that the news portrayed of the interview. I will examine the themes portrayed by the author as well as the style, voice, and audience of this essay.
The essay begins as Coates documents an interview in which he gave on a Sunday to a popular news show host through satellite. Coates then states that while the satellite connected the host and him, that they could have not
…show more content…
What a body represents in America is much more than a physical specimen. A body holds physical specimen such as skin in which deviates people. Through the process of segregation due to social constructs, comes oppression. Coates explains that the bodies of the individuals that he listed such as Michael Brown, Renisha McBride, Eric Garner, John Crawford, Tamir Rice, and Marlene Pinnock did not belong to them due to the idea of race, which is formed due to social construct. Their bodies belonged to individuals that were apart of the government such as police officers who decided to use their authority in ways that violate the oath that they took to protect. The most devastating part for both Coates and I, is that the officers who violated their oaths and took lives, are on paid-leave and not in jail for murder. Through that devastation, Coates relays another theme to his son, which is strength. Coates explains that his son is going to have to live in this world no matter what lies ahead and he must presumably portray

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    Ta-Nehisi Coates, born in West Baltimore, now residing in Brooklyn, is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. There, he writes about culture, politics, and social issues, which he also discusses in his recent novel Between the World and Me, released in 2015. Fear dominated the first thirty pages of the book as it does people’s lives. The fear could be found in the language of the streets, the school system, and in the concept and pressure of the American Dream. First of all, Coates depicted fear as prey prowling on the streets through body and language; it was shown through rage.…

    • 1149 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    What Is Coates'summoned '

    • 104 Words
    • 1 Pages

    Coates opens by reviewing an occasion in which he is "summoned" to teach the universe of white individuals about his perspectives on bigotry and American history. Nonetheless, this is made troublesome by the way that there is such a colossal bay between the universe of dark individuals (counting Coates himself) and the group of onlookers he is made a request to address. He brings up that confirmation of this bay lies in the way that he is being made a request to clarify his perspectives, when in his mind all the important proof as of now exists in the white mythologization of American…

    • 104 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In June 2015, The Atlantic published an article with, acclaimed author, journalist, and social/political activist, Ta-Nehisi Coates that addresses Black men about the social injustices in America and how opportunities differ based upon race in a segment called “Letter To Son”. Coates develops a feeling of sympathy throughout his article about Black men and women in America and how much they have suffered. Coates also makes it a point to show that the foundation of America has a great deal to do with the abuse of the mind, body, and spirit of Black people. Coates adopts a firm and passionate tone to address the social injustices that setbacks Black men in America. Coates uses pathos and anaphora to illustrate the survival of a Black person in America whose past in based on slavery and murder.…

    • 606 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Coates feel that that will never happen. In Coate’s eyes blacks will never be anything in life, but a disappointment and a failure. He starts the letter off by telling his son about the day a TV host asked him what it meant to lose his body. He explained how it made him feel less of a person, but his answer was American history. I feel that Mr. Coates wanted his son to know that…

    • 1130 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Or even in society today, Coates must not realize there are white females who marry black men and white men who marry black females. He doesn’t see the good in a white man who stops to help a homeless black man who calls a bridge his home. He must not recognize that black men and women are leaders and have people who follow and support them. Coates doesn’t see the black basketball coach who is respected by twelve teenage white girls. If he does, he has failed to persuade myself, as a reader, that white people are more than a stereotype.…

    • 1053 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He is coming to a lot of realization of the world in his book and really questions the America society as a whole. “The problem with the police is not that they are fascist pigs but that our country is ruled by majoritarian pigs,” (page 79) He sees that in America’s democratic republic, it is the people that hold the power so everything that happens is the direct effect of the people. He sees that the majority (white Americans) are the ones in control and it is because of them that society is the way it is today. Coates is writing this book to his son, so it doesn’t have a very harsh tone like Williams, since it is for his son to be more aware of his circumstances as a black boy in…

    • 822 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Coates, speaks about how your body is a privilege and you need to protect yourself and anything you do while living in this world can change if your body stays in the world. He speaks of how Americans…

    • 1407 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Coates addresses the stereotype of the thug and how society responds to those who fit the stereotype. Black boys cannot be true to themselves around white people in most cases. Black boys have to make sure their appearance is validated by white people in order to be considered safe. Coates gives much needed insight as far the struggles black males go…

    • 807 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In James Baldwin’s “A Letter to My Nephew,” he writes a letter to his nephew James about racism. Baldwin, in short, says that white people are innocent because they do not know any better and to love them even though they do not deserve it. In Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me,” he writes a letter to his son about racism. In Coates’s letter he basically tells his son what it is like to live in an African Americans body. Both of these authors are writing letters to young men in their families, but Baldwin uses paradoxes to reach his audiences and Coates uses repetition.…

    • 634 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ta-Nehisi Coates ' an African American creator utilizes a dreary tone to address the difficulties impinging on the lives of American dark particularly prejudice, isolation, and homicide. Coates presents the book to his fourteen-year-old son in a type of a letter. Coates communicates his sentiment on reality about history and race taking after a progression of encounters to his child and the ones reading. As a young African-American male student, this book related to me in every way imaginable. Granted, some of these hardships are unfamiliar with me, I still feel a sense to tension and sadness as I read about my people.…

    • 1326 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    As the name of the title aptly suggests, Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his article, “The Case for Reparations”, builds a case for the racial minority, that is black folk, to seek amends for the years of injustice and servitude rendered by them to the majority, here in America. Through the medium of Clyde Ross, a veteran but now ordinary citizen, representative of the plight of any other black person living in that era, Coates attempts to provide an argument for the ills and hardships that the Blacks were faced with throughout the previous few centuries, under the regime of white supremacy, in the land of opportunity. In his article, Coates emphasizes not only on the explicit forms and visible aspects of racism and discrimination prevalent, such as…

    • 2480 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rhetorical Analyses Essay Ta-nehisi Coates wrote a memoir addressed to his son Samori titled Between the world and me, where he refers to The Dream and want it truly consists of. Coates avoids from portraying his memoir as a rant against the fight between two races. He doesn’t write of the cliché arguments that we have all heard more than enough times. In Coates’s memoir, he starts the memoir of by making a distinct separation between the two different groups one known as a dreamer and those who aren’t dreamers. Coates refers to the dream in a variety of different ways he goes from talking about how the dream smells of peppermint and taste of strawberry shortcake to how it puts black bodies in danger.…

    • 1178 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    He fears for his African-American son or any African-American male that will have to grow up in America the way it is today. Coates’s experiences and sense of urgency for his son’s safety and well being allows the reader to see the severity of Black History then and the urgency that is needed now. He discusses how African-American…

    • 1336 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Coates begins his essay with a story. A story about…

    • 1507 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I think he wants both the reader and his son not be held back or become hateful towards the world in any way but it is also difficult to allow him or anyone to run headfirst into the world without understanding what it really is. He tells his son Samori "he will have to struggle because it is the only way to live an “honorable and sane life” (97).When reading a book like this you might expect a few inspirational words at the end of Coates’s letter to his son; however, the author does not have anything deep or inspirational for his son, in fact, it ends with a bleak image of him driving through the ghettos of Chicago in the rain. In the end, Coates advice to his son Samori and the reader is to struggle and be free as much…

    • 1245 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays