"Mr Underwood simply figured it was a sin to kill cripples, be they standing, sitting, or escaping. He likened Tom's death to the senseless slaughter of songbirds by hunters and children."
Answer:
Congregation got scared.Their reaction shows sermon was guilty of sins .
<u>Explanation:</u>
Mr. Hooper sermon is acting as a minster in a story named "Minister's black veil".The author of this story is Nathaniel Hawthorne. In this story, the minister who was pretending to be a good person was wicked. He was involved in adultery.
The Congregation was scared about Hooper's sermon's new looks. But Hooper did not bother about the reaction of the congregation.
Hooper"s veil fill the congregation with fear that their minister is also guilty of sins. The reaction of the congregation towards sermon shows that he had committed a crime.
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.