Essay 5

FINAL DRAFT

Maddy

Mr.Salsich

English 9

October 24,2009

A Broken Limb:

An Essay about Death in Essays by John Jay chapman and James Baldwin

A twig seems small and unimportant, but a closer look reveals a complicated, beautifully formed masterpiece of nature. This little piece of wood, torn from the tree, with twists and turns and rough bark, can be asreconditeas human emotions. Evil contort sand breaks the spirit, just as a twig can be bent and destroyed. In "Coatesville," by John Jay Chapman, and "Notes of a Native Son," by James Baldwin, many similarities can be found between a twig and the human emotion described in the writing.

TSThe twig is twisted, like human minds and morals polluted by evil, and the twig's bark is a hardened outer shell that can be peeled off to reveal a softer inside, like a person's hardened outer shell of hate can be peeled off to reveal more compassionate innards.SD Humans, except for John Jay Chapman himself and the two noble souls who came to listen to his speech, seemed to have spiraled away from everything good and right.CM Chapman's essay describes the "wickedness of all America and of three hundred years" that had "tinctured" the people who killed the black man.CM The resolution of slavery was not a real escape, because the wickedness still dragged people under, andpulledthem into darkness and uncertainty.SD This darkness unleashed their claws and twisted their view of what was right.CM They became defensive, and out of this defensiveness came atrocity towards those who were blamed for the darkness and confusion, atrocity like the lynching inCoatesville.CM The twig is bent out of shape, like minds oppressed by a history of cruelty, the cruelty of slavery, which "makes men cruel and leaves them cruel." SD Take away the tough bark of the twig, and the inside is light and soft; similarly, if a human's shield of hate could be taken off an inside that is more compassionate and tolerant would be revealed. CM All the evil of slavery made humans rigid and cold; they saw themselves doing things that weretotallywrong to other humans, to their own kind.CMThrown into this black sea of wretched things, humans did not know what to do but hate, and they were left with a callous outside, a skin made numb so the evil would not hurt so much, eyes blocked by red confusion, and an inexplicable, uncontrollable urge to hurt, because the thought was maybe, just maybe, the hurt would lift up their hearts from the pits they had been dropped in. CS John Jay Chapman's essay shows how evil can disturb someone so much that he or she becomes twisted in mind, like the twig is twisted in body, and apathetic and hardened on the outer layer, like the twig's rough layer of bark.

TS The twig is also broken, akin to James Baldwin's father's broken communication and broken mind, and Baldwin's broken spirit in the essay "Notes of a Native Son." SD Baldwin's father lost touch with his children, like the twig was ripped from its branch. CM Something inside the father's heart had cracked, and he could no longer reach out with words to his children, bringing sadness into his life and the life of his son; after his father's death, Baldwin realizes he "had hardly ever spoken to him." CM His father'sbitter, acrimoniousnature put his children in an unreachable, foreign place, where his words were never heard in agentle, lovingtone.SD All this bitterness in his life caused by the lack of love from his children made Baldwin's father broken inside.CM His soul must have been in so much pain that his mind became clouded with feelings of doom.CM The father's strong belief in the apocalypse shows how pessimistic his cold life had made him, and the streets ravaged by hateful rioters on the day of his funeral seemed to be a finalacknowldegementto this man filled with depression.SD His father's death opened up a trap door beneath Baldwin's feet, and he went plummeting down into a place full of regrets and sorrows, just like a twig torn from its life source tumbles down to thebarrenground below.CM Baldwin wished he had found a way to love his father, found a way through all the emotional cobwebs, found a way to see through the film of everything superficial to his father's deeply-buried heart.CM He felt so grief-stricken, and his thoughts were so dark with remorse; he felt cast aside, pulled down a drain into an irredeemable brokenness of spirit, like the twig that has been torn from its nourishing mother tree.CS James Baldwin's essay is a pitiful cry in a world that had ended, where a father's communication and mind had buckled and collapsed, and the child of this father felt lost and forlorn, like a pathetic twig hurled away from the branch into the unknown.

A twig on the ground might not draw much attention. If one picked up the twig, though, he or she would discover intricacies as complicated as the maze of the human heart and mind. Cruelty, violence, hardened hearts, and death produce destruction. When humans experience this destruction, they become twisted, and they put up a shield to protect their depressed insides, like a gnarly twig grows its abrasive bark to protect its inner life.