Transformation In Black Like Me

In the narrative, Black Like Me, by John Howard Griffin, the tale of a white man is unraveled as he poses as a black man in the Deep South. Known to be the most racist and prejudiced states in the United States, the black Mr. Griffin travels through Mississippi and Alabama. Staring back at the Negro version of himself, he is appalled at his reflection, “The transformation was total and shocking. [He] had expected to see myself disguised, but this was something else. [He] was imprisoned in the the flesh if an utter stranger, an unsympathetic one with whom [he] felt no kinship…” (12). Mr. Griffin’s surprise and disgust for his newly transformed self accurately portray the Southern attitude to blacks. Unconnected, cold, and unsympathetic. As he begins his transformation he must conquer the fear of himself as well as the fear of people who will harm him due to his skin color. …show more content…
Griffin, adjusting to his new, harsh environment was difficult. The segregation makes finding a place to rest, sleep, eat, and even use the restroom extremely challenging. Additionally, many Southerners could not even look at a black person without the terrible “hate stare” which Mr. Griffin describes all too often. When purchasing train tickets, the ticket saleswoman has such bitterness in her eyes that afterwards he feels depressed at the ignorance and evil of common people, “Nothing can describe the withering horror of this. You feel lost, sick at heart before such unmasked hatred, not so much because it threatens you as because it shows humans in such an inhuman light” (105). The disgusting cruelty and stubbornness in people’s ways is shown many times throughout the novel, and it is one topic in which he feels needs a lot of