Jane Lucas

To honor Martin Luther King, Jr., today, I am asking you to you engage in a close study of his epistolary essay “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Although I could ask you to listen to a recording of it, I ask that you to read it instead. King’s gift for oratory is well known, but for students of writing, closely examining his words on the page is a more pertinent exercise than listening to his voice.

What makes King’s letter an effective piece of writing? With that question in mind, consider these words: “Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, ‘Wait” (par. 11). Here King is addressing his initial audience, the eight white Birmingham-area clergymen who criticized his protest as “unwise and untimely” (par. 1). He suggests to those men that waiting to act isn’t difficult when you yourself aren’t the victim of injustice, when you haven’t, in King’s words, “felt the stinging darts of segregation” (par. 11). The sentence is notable not only for the contrast it illustrates between King’s reality and the lives of his readers but also for the words that King uses to show that contrast.

Consider King’s sentence and the paraphrase that follows:

• Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.”
• Maybe it is simple for people who have not experienced segregation to say, “Wait.”

King’s sentence is stronger than the paraphrase that follows it because of the “stinging darts.” Writing that someone has not “experienced segregation” is abstract. Readers do not feel the general experience in the second sentence, but they feel King’s “stinging darts.” Sensory details strengthen sentences by appealing to readers’ senses, and figurative language invigorates writing by making the unfamiliar familiar. King’s white readers have not been the victims of segregation, but his choice of words makes them feel the sting.

While King’s “stinging darts” sentence—a relatively short one—is laudable, the long, winding sentence that follows is nothing short of staggering.

It starts with these words: “But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim.” King presents those atrocities in an introductory dependent clause, one whose full meaning depends on an independent clause that follows. But rather than immediately turning to an independent clause to complete the thought, King expands the sentence with this series of dependent clauses:

• when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters;
• when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society;
• when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people;
• when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you;
• when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”;
• when your first name becomes “n—,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”;
• when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments;
• when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–(par. 11).

The independent clause that readers have been waiting for, the statement that completes the thought is this: “then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait” (par. 11). Those words could have immediately followed the first dependent clause, but instead King offers nine more dependent clauses, ten darts that sting his readers.

Ten dependent clauses connected by semicolons followed by a dash and an independent clause, a total of 316 words: That is not a structure I recommend for the sentences you write in English 1103, but it’s a valuable model, nevertheless.

I hope that you, as citizens, will continue to study the words of his letter. As your writing teacher, I hope that you will return to the sentence that I have examined in detail here. Along with showing his readers why his nonviolent protests could not wait, that sentence of King’s demonstrates how to develop a piece of writing through the accumulation of detail—not just the when, but the when and when and when . . . .

King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” California State University, Chico. https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf.

Next Up

In class on Wednesday, we will turn to briefly to “Letter from Birmingham Jail” before you begin planning and drafting your literacy narrative.

Yesterday morning in class, as models for your own literacy narrative, we examined David Sedaris‘s “Me Talk Pretty One Day” and “The Day Language Came into My Life,” Chapter Four of Helen Keller’s autobiography, The Story of My Life.

In groups of three, you and your classmates collaboratively addressed the following questions:

• Which of Helen Keller’s paragraphs present scene, and which provide summary?
• Where does Davis Sedaris first shift from summary to scene?
• Where does Sedaris use figurative language?
• Where does he employ hyperbole?
• Bonus: Where does Keller include a biblical allusion?

Here are the answers to those questions:

• The first, third, and ninth paragraphs of Helen Keller’s chapter provide summary. The majority of the chapter’s paragraphs–six of the nine, or two-thirds–present scene.
• Sedaris’s first shifts from summary to scene when his French teacher says, “If you have not meimslsxp or lpgpdmurct by this time, then you should not be in this room” (167).
• He employs similes when he writes “not unlike Pa Kettle trapped backstage at a fashion show” (167) and “like a translation of one of those Playmate of the Month data sheets” (168). Also, he includes a metaphor when he writes, “everybody into the language pool, sink or swim” (167).
• Sedaris turns to hyperbole when he writes that one student had “front teeth the size of tombstones” (168). Due to our time constraints, I did not ask you to address figurative langauge in Keller’s chapter, but note that she uses it as well when she writes, “I was like that ship before my education began” (par. 3).
• In the final paragraph of Keller’s chapter, she presents a biblical allusion with the words “like Aaron’s rod, with flowers” (par. 9). That line from the book of Numbers refers to the sprouting of flowers from the staff of Aaron. For Aaron and his brother, Moses, that flowering signified that their family was chosen to do the work of God. Similarly, for Keller, the blossoming of the world through language served as a revelation: the knowledge that words could give meaning to all that she could neither hear nor see.

For that exercise yesterday, I asked you to focus first on summary and scene because they are important methods of treating time in narratives. Simply put, scene shows the reader what is taking place, while summary tells the reader what has happened over time. Secondly, I asked you to examine details of language. Scene is to time what concrete details are to the senses. The specifics of figurative language–what the metaphors and similes show us–allow readers to experience a story as if they are looking over the narrator’s shoulder.

As you begin planning your own literacy narrative, look back at these notes and reread “Me Talk Pretty One Day” and “The Day that Language Came into My Life.” The acts of rereading model essays and analyzing their elements will strengthen your ability to craft your own literacy narrative.

Works Cited

Keller, Helen. “The Day that Language Came into My Life.” The Story of My Life. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/keller/life/life.html.

Sedaris, David. “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” Me Talk Pretty One Day. Little Brown, 2000. pp. 166-73.

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, look to the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, and review the posts devoted to Scrabble tips.

This morning in class, as models for your own literacy narratives, we will examine David Sedaris‘s “Me Talk Pretty One Day” and “The Day Language Came into My Life,” the first pages of Chapter Four of Helen Keller’s autobiography, The Story of My Life.

In groups of three or four, you and your classmates will collaboratively address the following questions:

• Which of Helen Keller’s paragraphs present scene, and which provide summary?
• Where does Davis Sedaris first shift from summary to scene?
• Where does Sedaris use figurative language?
• Where does he employ hyperbole?
• Bonus: Where does Keller include a biblical allusion?

The first two questions focus on scene and summary because they are important methods of treating time in narratives. Simply put, scene shows the reader what is taking place, while summary tells the reader what has happened over time.

The last three questions focus on details of language. Scene is to time what concrete details are to the senses. Such details allow readers to experience the story as if they are looking over the narrator’s shoulder.

Together, Sedaris’s essay and Keller’s chapter excerpt demonstrate two vastly different ways to present a literacy narrative. “Me Talk Pretty One Day” offers a quirky look at the challenges of learning French from a sarcastic, soul-crushing instructor. Keller’s story poignantly recounts learning to make meaning through the sign language of her teacher, Annie Sullivan, learning that certain finger positions mean “water” for those who cannot hear it, and for others, like her, who can neither see nor hear it.

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, look to the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, and review the posts devoted to Scrabble tips.