Preview

Black People and Tone

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
299 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Black People and Tone
Tone is the attitude a writer has about a topic. For example, a tone might be serious, sarcastic, respectful, or unsympathetic. A writer establishes tone through choice of words and details.

Directions: Zora Neale Hurston creates a strong tone when she writes about race in this essay. In the second column of the chart, list key word choices and details from the essay that reflect her attitude for each topic. Describe her tone in the third column. Then answer the question that follows.

Topic | Word Choices and Details | Tone | Growing up in a town with only African-Americans | She knew no other and just thought it was normal. | Laid back,normal | White people visiting Eatonville | NorthernersWhites would just pass thru | Exciting, actors | The difference between Eatonville and Jacksonville | Eatonville was only blacks and Jacksonville was predominantly white with colors being a minority. | Solemn and lonely | The lasting effects of slavery in the United States | People reminding her that she is a granddaughter of slaves | Depressed | How African-Americans and white people respond differently to music | African-Americans feel more depth and soul. It is real they have lived it and white people look for more classical to relax and just enjoy. | respectful |

What is the overall tone of Hurston’s essay? What point does Hurston make by choosing this tone to discuss the subject of race? Is Hurston’s tone appropriate and effective for her topic? Explain.

I believe her tone was excited about her younger years and the fun of just being a kid and knowing nothing about race or discrimination. Towards the end it became more solemn. But she was wrong by no means. Her talk and expression was regulated by her story telling. She only told about her situation and what she experienced. I really enjoyed
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Analysis of My Son the Marine by
    • 612 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Analysis of My Son the Marine by

    You might review the terminology, as you seem to be confusing some of the terms. For example, you refer to a tone of pathos. These are two separate aspects, though. Tone is the writer 's attitude towards the topic while pathos is a rhetorical appeal to the audience 's emotions.…

    • 612 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Hot Zone anylasis
    • 772 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Hot Zone anylasis

    Tone: The attitude of the speaker or writer as revealed in the choice of vocabulary.…

    • 772 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Bedford Reader Questions
    • 698 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Bedford Reader Questions

    The tone of this essay is quiet yet engaging. The quiet tone makes the reader feel as though White is talking one on one with them. It is engaging in this tone because it is more of a personal memory that White wants to share with the audience. For example, White uses the simple yet sophisticated sentence saying "We had a good week at camp." This can be interpreted in many ways, but White is simply telling the reader in a simplistic and quiet tone that camp was good. This is also still very engaging because the simplicity of it makes the reader curious as to what made it a good week at camp.…

    • 698 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Comprares and Contrast the Essays of Hurston and Baldwin
    • 360 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Comprares and Contrast the Essays of Hurston and Baldwin

    The poem “How it feels to be colored me,” if you feel uncertain that Hurston is asserting her pride in her ethnicity, then you have gotten her message! Throughout the essay she points to her feelings of being herself, and individual, much more that she feels a member of a specific race, or “granddaughter to slaves.” She does mention instances when she “feels colored,” but her strongest experiences of being fully alive are when she swings down the boulevard in Harlem, charged by the adventure of being young and strong and “the eternal feminine,” an inner-circle member of the family of humankind. She even states that she does not feel particularly American –nothing that specific, even though she was born here- but part of something much greater. That ardor of belonging to the winder world, and being at home in it, is more central to who she is that the labels or culture of any one ethnicity.…

    • 360 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Ehrenreich Tones
    • 781 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Ehrenreich Tones

    Using tone in writing is really important because it convey a message that the author want to express to the reader. The tone Barbara Ehrenreich uses in the book “Nickel and Dimed” is changing rapidly because she wants her reader to really see the realistic of what she has to face. She put herself into the life of a minimum wage circumstance to see if she can survive or not. She go to different location in the country but they all have the same point that the job she take is all minimum wage jobs. Her tones factually show the challenges and struggles that she face with the job. She doesn’t show judgment but in her writing, her tone sounds sympathetic, a little anger and sarcastic to the reader.…

    • 781 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Summary Of How It Feels To Be Colored Me
    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Summary Of How It Feels To Be Colored Me

    “How it Feels to Be Colored Me” is an inciteful look at the sense of self that Zora Hurston feels. Hurstons experiences can be explained by Allport’s in-group theory. Due to the nature of the times that Hurston lived in, people normally kept within their own race group. Most neighborhoods at the time were either predominantly black or white. Hurston seems to not be bothered by this but rather, is astonished by the fact that people allow this to happen.…

    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Migration To Chicago In The 19th Century
    • 87 Words
    • 1 Page

    Migration To Chicago In The 19th Century

    In the early 19th century, thousands of African Americans began moving to Chicago from the southern states as the Great Migration began. In the 1920s, restrictive covenants, along with zoning restrictions that were established by white businessmen, prohibited African Americans living among White Americans. In result, Black businessmen and businesswomen, professionals, and middle class families started to settle into Bronzeville as Chicago’s wealthy white residents moved to the North Shore. Due to limited housing options, they started to settle into houses that were owned by white investors.…

    • 87 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    4 11 English
    • 214 Words
    • 1 Page

    4 11 English

    It also known as the Harlem of the South. African-Americans held senior positions in the government and in the police and fire departments. The Great Fire of 1901 began in northern LaVilla and burned most of Jacksonville, though LaVilla's business district was spared. In 1929, the Ritz movie theatre was built. In the 1960s and '70s, the Ritz and LaVilla business and entertainment district declined; as the walls of segregation begin to fall, many middle and upper-class African-Americans used their new found opportunities to move to other areas of the city.…

    • 214 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Inner Pece
    • 1463 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Inner Pece

    Salah O. Ahmed Intro to Afro-American Literature Professor Todd Duncan (This could use a longer conclusion) Inner Peace In the essays, "How it Feels to be Colored Me" and "On Being Young-a Woman-and Colored", the authors, Zola Neale Hurston and Marita Bonner, respectively, tell a similar story of having grown up and had to deal with racism in the Post-Bellum Era. In their appeal to a new generation, one less stigmatized by slavery and more hopeful about the future than its predecessor, Hurston and Bonner take divergent paths to point to a common understanding. The convergence between their works centers on the idea that in order for the young people of their generation to achieve a sense of peace with the world around them, they must first find peace within themselves.…

    • 1463 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Zora Neale Hurston Character Analysis
    • 459 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Zora Neale Hurston Character Analysis

    During the post-civil war era, most “colored people did not know how to be free” (Houston Hartsfield Holloway). The abolishment of slavery was a major event that led blacks to desire fulfillment in life. Zora Neale Hurston demonstrates this through Janie’s life and the people she encounters. Each character provides a different outlook on life and their values are distinct from Janie’s. The novel questions what true happiness is via Janie’s influences and her quest to find love.…

    • 459 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Residential Segregation In Atlanta
    • 195 Words
    • 1 Page

    Residential Segregation In Atlanta

    In the case of Atlanta, the city’s elites targeted mixed-race communities adjacent to predominantly White spaces with the claim they were “blighted” in order to justify their demolishing in order to serve private interest. In 1933 and 1996, the impacts of the racialization of blight, urban renewal, and residential segregation culminated in Atlanta with increasing tension between Black and White landowners/residences. In 1933, developer, Charles Forrest Palmer spearheaded two public housing projects Techwood and University Homes, both of which served as examples of housing with racial disparities as one served to accommodate Whites and the other, Blacks (Taylor 244). Within these developments, housing was given to Whites as a priority hence,…

    • 195 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Zora Neal Hurston Analysis
    • 676 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Zora Neal Hurston Analysis

    Hurston recalls that her mother cared deeply about how she and her siblings presented themselves in front of others, in a way so as not to appear to be poor "no-count Negroes" and rather supply themselves with many opportunities in life. Her father, on the other hand, was shown to care more about his daughter's attitude so that she would not "have too much spirit" since "the white folks were not going to stand for it." Hurston intelligently presents these two different viewpoints from her parents in a way that can easily be understood by the audience.…

    • 676 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    To Kill A Mockingbird Literary Analysis
    • 635 Words
    • 3 Pages

    To Kill A Mockingbird Literary Analysis

    In To kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee uses tone to help the reader feel what the character in the book is feeling. An example from the text is, “ Dill had started crying and couldn’t stop; quietly at first, then his sobs were heard by several people in the balcony.”(265) This shows tone by scout telling the reader the emotion that Dill was feeling during the trial of Tom Robinson. This is related to the theme of racism and injustice because this is when Dill realized the inequality and injustice of the trail and how…

    • 635 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Neale Hurston's 'How It Feels To Be Colored Me'
    • 728 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Neale Hurston's 'How It Feels To Be Colored Me'

    Compare and contrast the narrator of Zora Neale Hurston 's "How it Feels to Be Colored Me" and either Toni Morrison 's main character, Sula, or Alice Walker’s Dee.…

    • 728 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Negro Expression
    • 1243 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Negro Expression

    In 1933, Zora Neil Hurston wrote "Characteristics of Negro Expression" to frame the Negro or African-American as she saw him. She saw the results of the Great Migration as terrifying and spasmodic, unbearably inhumane and devastating to those left behind. For Hurston, rural black people were being forgotten; disappearing amidst the heady enthusiasm of the urban New Negro Movement. In Hurston's essay she describes the different concepts of what it meant to be a black American in the South. She sees the new Negro as encompassing theses elements: being dramatic, having the will to adorn, being angular, asymmetrical, dancing, folkloric, having originality, mimicry, non-reserve, having a peculiar dialect, and hanging out at the jook or pleasure house. These are just a few of the compositional elements used to described the forgotten Negro in the south. By reexamining Hurston's essay, critiques will have a proper understanding of these social characteristics and will have a better understanding of the African-American in relation to his identity.…

    • 1243 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More

Related Topics