Malcolm X Rhetorical Analysis

Malcolm X

Reading a process. The first step is to learn how to read the letters that are written on the page. Next, you have to learn to understand what all of these words mean put together. Finally, you think about there meaning in coordination with all of the other words in the essay, book, article, etc. and relate them to things that you know from previous encounters and form a perspective. Throughout the course of this paper, I will use Malcolm X as an example to show how someone grows as a reader. I will also discuss the how when a writer speaks of themselves in a story they are both the teller of the story and the character. Malcolm X was a hustler; he ran the streets, until the law caught up with him. He was sentenced to time
But now, trying to write simple English, I not only wasn’t articulate, I wasn’t even functional.” He first realized that he wanted to increase his knowledge of the English language when he met a fellow prisoner that commanded everyone’s attention. In Malcom X’s words, “Bimbi first made me feel envy of his stock of knowledge. Bimbi had always taken charge of any conversations he was in, and I had tried to emulate him.” This is where Malcolm first describes how he was as a reader at the beginning of his time in prison. Malcolm X grabbed a dictionary and started reading and memorizing what was on the pages. He says, “I began copying. In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my tablet everything printed on that first page, down to the punctuation marks. I believe it took me a day. Then, aloud, I read back, to myself, I read my own handwriting.” Malcolm simply believed everything he read. He wasn’t absorbing the true meaning of the words or how to use them in context. He simply memorized and learned. He was reading like a child. He read to learn how to read not how to understand or increase his understanding. Malcolm X did not think critically. Its like when I child reads about Spiderman and doesn’t stop for a second to think how that would never happen. The child just happily accepts
He began to understand what the books meant. Malcolm said, “I suppose it was inevitable that as my word – base broadened, I could for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying.” He spent the rest of the time in the prison reading and reading and reading more. In his own words Malcolm said, “until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading on my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of books with a wedge. Between Mr. Muhammad’s teachings, my correspondence, my visitors…and my reading of books, months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.” Malcolm was finally free to learn and grow. His mind had been awakened. He wasn’t just sitting there letting life pass him by he was getting an entire new perspective on the world and it was opening up his life. As his reading progressed he began to realize things about the society. He was using his