Read this excerpt from james baldwin's "notes of a native son":the day of my father's funeral had also been my nineteenth birthd
ay. as we drove him to the graveyard, the spoils of injustice, anarchy, discontent, and hatred were all around us. it seemed to me that god himself had devised, to mark my father's end, the most sustained and brutally dissonant of codas. and it seemed to me, too, that the violence which rose all about us as my father left the world had been devised as a corrective for the pride of his eldest son.which sentence best explains how the structure of the excerpt supports the author's purpose? a.it ties baldwin's father's funeral to his birthday and shows that the author is angry that his father died on that day.
b.it compares a term signifying the end of a musical piece with his father's death to illustrate the finality of death.
c.it contrasts the somber mood of a funeral procession with the happy memories baldwin has about his father.
d.it interweaves elements of narrative and commentary to convey the message that hatred is destructive.
Before answering the question, it is convenient to mention that James Baldwin was a Black writer in the decade of the 50s and even though there were other Negro Writers in the literary world, they all suffered from racisms and social prosecution, the novel “<em>Notes of a native Son</em>” is an autobiography assembled from essays <em>James Baldwin </em>had written. In the novel the author intends to depict the hatred black people had to suffer at that time and it is overtly presented in the excerpt above, when the author mentions that: “…<em>the spoils of injustice, anarchy, discontent, and hatred were all around us.”</em>
Having mentioned the former, the sentence that best explains how the structure of the excerpt supports the author's purpose is: “<em>d.it interweaves elements of narrative and commentary to convey the message that hatred is destructive.” </em>With this sentence we can find the perfect reason for expressions like “<em>injustice, anarchy, discontent, and hatred “…the violence which rose all about us as my father left the world had been devised as a corrective for the pride of his eldest son.</em>” which are the main and strongest arguments presented in the excerpt, all the hatred and suffering that the author suffered for being a Negro at that time.
B, D, and E are the correct answers. Literary themes are usually profound statements that teach a "lesson". A and C are just random sentences that don't have meaning.
