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Yellow = Thesis
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Life lesson
We all learn many new skills and lessons in school, but not all of these skills or
lessons are positive. There are times that we experience situations that are very
hard for us, especially in younger age. It is hard to emotionally get over or even
understand these hard lessons when we are younger, but they will prepare us for
life. The text “Shame” is from political activist Dick Gregory’s biography. In this text,
Gregory is telling a story about the lesson that he learned in school and how it
affected him. In Gregory’s text “Shame,” the author successfully changes tone from
hopeful to shameful in order to show the reader his situation and help them
understand it.
In the beginning of the text, the author writes about his first love with a hopeful
tone. He was about seven and in love with a girl name Helene Tucker, “a lightcomplexioned little girl with pigtails and nice manners”(278). He was hoping that
Helene would notice him as a neat and polite boy, so he would make sure to go to
school with clean clothes. He writes about how the teacher thought he was
“stupid”(279), but he did not seem to care since he had hope in love. He still wanted
to go to school to only look at Helene. In the first six paragraphs, the author explains
that he was poor and he had to sit in “the idiot’s seat, the troublemaker’s seat” (289),
but he still had hope of being noticed by Helene Tucker.
The author’s tone changes to frustrated and then shifts to a shameful tone
when he paints the picture about the day before “Negro payday”(280), the day that
Gregory learned his biggest life lesson. He writes the narrative about the day in
detail so that the readers can recognize that the tone changes from this paragraph
on. At first when he says “Negro payday”, his tone seems sarcastic. However when
he says “I was shaking, scared to death”(280), the author allows us to understand
his emotions. The author starts his text with hopeful tone then he switches his tone
to sarcastic to scared to embarrassed. Also, in the last paragraph, Gregory talks
about his feeling after what had happened in class, how it affected him and how he
started to hate everything about his life. He was ashamed of who he was. He puts the
reader in a place where we can feel his emotions in order to understand this text.
After several readings my understanding of the text changed. I could see why
the author is changing his tone in the text. Gregory starts his text using a helpful
tone. He gets the reader’s attention by pointing that he was in love, and how he
would sacrifice just to get Helene’s attention and he would not give up. I think the
author is showing the readers he was a strong child until the day that teacher
embarrassed him in front of the class and said, “’we know you don’t have a Daddy.’”
(281). From that point on Dick Gregory started to hate his life and every thing about
it. He was ashamed of how he was. After several readings of the text, I understood
the author’s point was not to get the readers to feel sorry for him. He is changing his
tone in order to tell the story and show that even though that incident really hurt
him, he still did not give up and for rest of his life he fought for his rights and what
he believed in.
I believe the author is successful in showing his readers his emotion to let them
understand it. For me as a reader, I really felt Gregory’s emotion the first time I read
the text. I truly felt like I was there, and I felt his “shame” even though I have never
experienced anything like that, nor even close to it. He starts his last paragraph with,
“Now there was shame everywhere.”(281). In this part of the text, hate and shame
are the feelings that were surrounding Gregory. He feels like the whole word had
heard the teacher and every one is feeling sorry for him. His little heart was broken,
and mine broke when I read this text for the first time. After several readings I came
to realize that the tone changes really helps in better understanding this text. The
author ends his paper with this sentence “Yeah, the whole word heard that day, we
all know you don’t have a Daddy.”(281). Gregory ends the text by using shameful
tone.
I think the way that Dick Gregory changes his tone is successful in helping his
readers to understand his situation very well. The author starts the text with a
hopeful tone and the love that he have not had got over till he was twenty-nine
years old. He changes his tone from the middle of the essay to a shameful tone.
Gregory’s tone at the end of the text is one of shame and hate because these are the
two emotions that fallowed him everywhere. The author felt the shame when he
was only seven, but that shame prepared him to achieve many great things in his
life.