Blog Assignment on "Being a Man" by Paul Theroux

Blog Assignment on “Being a Man” By Paul Theroux

It is my opinion, the claim that Paul Theroux tries to convey in his essay "Being a Man" is his disdain for how a man is perceived in America and how the idea of masculinity seems to be forced into the minds of every young male. He states in his essay "The whole idea of manhood in America is pitiful." "Even the expression "Be a man!" strikes me as insulting and abusive." He again solidifies his claim when he states, "It ought to be clear by now that I have something of an objection to the way we turn boys into men."

I think that his sub-argument is that he felt that being a writer and being a man were incompatible. He tells that even as a young man he knew that his wanting to be a writer was at odds with the perceived notion of being a man. When he says, "Everything in stereotyped manliness goes against the life of the mind." I think that he is talking of his struggles as a young man trying to persue a career in writing. You get the feeling that he spent alot of time being humiliated because he was viewed as an outcast due to his unwillingness to conforn to what he considered "oppressive roleplaying."

Questions from "Mommy, What Does 'Nigger' Mean?"

As I read "Mommy, What Does Nigger Mean?" by Gloria Naylor, I myself had many questions. Why does Ms. Naylor say that she considers the written word inferior to the spoken. She states in her passage that "Words themselves are innocuous; it is the consensus that gives them true power" (Naylor 510). After thinking about this for a moment, I see her point. If you take a look at Webster's dictionary you can see that the word "nigger" in and of itself is not a bad word. It is derived from the latin word niger meaning black. It is only when the word is spoken by some ignorant person that is fuled by racial hatred and bigotry that it becomes a bad word.

Ms. Naylor describes her family and childhood home in the passage. She also discusses how the words "nigger" and "girl" were used among her family. I think that she does this so that the reader can invision her family life and childhood home. This makes it easier for the reader to relate to her family.

I often wondered why African Americans would use the word nigger. Why would they choose to use a word that has such deep seated hatred associated with it, but Ms. Naylor explains that by "meeting the word head-on, they proved it had absolutely nothing to do with the way they were determined to live their lives" (Naylor 512). The family took a word that was used to signify worthlessness or degradation and tranformed it to signify the varied and complex human beings they knew themselves to be, thus redering the word impotant.