My Paper!

Audre Lorde uses text, tone, and symbolism to describe her first experience of injustice as a child in her essay “The Fourth of July.” Lorde develops the theme of her ignorance of injustice throughout the essay which turns to anger in the end. Lorde uses so many descriptive words in her writing to pull the theme together. You may not realize what she’s trying to get at but in the end you understand. Another thing that helps in reading this essay is knowing the background of the author and the time period of which the story takes place. Lorde doesn’t just come right out and tell you things so it’s helpful to know ahead of time. The article is about a childhood memory of Lorde’s where her family goes on vacation. You find out as you read that it is 1947 and Audre Lorde and her family are black. This plays a very important role in analyzing Lorde’s theme. Other than Lorde’s word choice, her tone factors into the theme as well. Reading the essay, you get the impression that Lorde’s family is very happy and content because of the tone Lorde uses. But as she learns more about the truths of the world, you can see her tone change throughout the story.
As I was reading this essay, a few things stood out to me. First, Lorde’s choice of words. In the beginning of the essay her family was taking a train to Washington, D.C. She describes in detail all the food that her mother has packed for them to eat. At this point in the story we don’t know what year it is or that her family is black. So when she described the food with such vivid colors: “brown bread”, “green pepper”, “violently yellow iced cakes” (Lorde 1), we don’t think anything of it. We then learn the truth of her heritage and the year and now we know what kind of things are happening to them in that time. Towards the end of her essay, Lorde recalls her family going into an ice cream shop and being refused service because they were black. You can tell that she hasn’t really been exposed to injustice that much because of the way she reacts. After this you can tell something has changed by Lorde’s word choice. Whereas in the beginning she used lots of colors to describe things, now she refers to everything as “white”. Everything she describes in the last paragraph of the essay is white. These words play an important part in interpreting the theme. When Lorde uses colors in her descriptions she is still naïve about the injustices that exist in the world. She is happy and expresses that through cheerful, colorful words. However, once she experiences injustice firsthand for the first time, she really gets an understanding of how the world works and is no longer naïve. It is then that she refers to everything as white. She is no longer happy or cheerful. It makes it seem like white is evil; it’s a bad color associated with the bad memory.
Another tool that Lorde uses to make us understand her theme is her tone. The tone throughout this essay changes and that’s how we know what the theme is. The tone that Lorde uses is very similar to the way she uses the colors in her word choice. In the beginning of the essay her tone starts out innocent and somewhat care-free. She is happy and young and ignorant to the world around her. The reason Lorde is so care-free and naïve is because her parents have sheltered her and her sisters all their lives. They don’t want them to know that people treat them differently because they are black. When they are on the way to Washington, D.C., they do not stop at the Liberty Bell. I think it’s because her parents don’t view the monument as a sign of liberty and freedom. After all, people didn’t treat them equally and that is what that monument was supposed to stand for. But Lorde didn’t know that. Her parents hid it from them. Another example is when Audre wants to eat in the dining car but her mother’s reply is that “the dining car food always cost too much money and besides, you never could tell whose hands had been playing all over the food, nor where those same hands had been just before” (Lorde 2). But what her mother really wasn’t saying was that blacks were not allowed on dining cars in 1947. Lorde and her sisters didn’t know that though, so they were still content and happy in their world. The tone of the essay changes, however, at the end of the essay. The incident at the ice cream shop opened Lorde’s eyes to a cruel world she had never seen before because of her parents. After leaving the ice cream shop, Lorde is filled with rage and doesn’t understand why her parents aren’t doing anything. Little did she know this was something her parents had been hiding from them their whole lives. Up until this moment the tone of the essay is so light and happy. After this incident though, the tone changes to one of anger. Lorde’s eyes had finally been opened to the unfair world around her. This sets the tone for the rest of the essay.
Not only do tone and word choice play a part in understanding the theme, but symbolism is also an important tool used. There are a lot of instances in the essay where Lorde uses symbolism to help us understand the situation, instead of just coming right out and saying so. When Lorde says “my parents did not approve of sunglasses” (Lorde 3); it opens up for something deeper than just the simple statement it seems like. By not allowing sunglasses, the girls had to squint because of the bright sun to see things. Her parents were keeping them from seeing things as fully as they would have been seen.
Looking at the monuments in such light and heat, Lorde said “I spent the afternoon squinting up at monuments to freedom and past presidencies and democracy, wondering
why the light and heat were both so much stronger in Washington, D.C., than back home in New York City” (Lorde3). This is such a strong example of symbolism. It’s like Lorde knows or senses that the injustice was more prevalent in the South. That’s why she had never witnessed it back home in New York City. It also symbolized that everything there was lighter or “whiter” than at home. At the end of the essay, Lorde says how she remembered everything about Washington, D.C. as being white. That is how he would always remember Washington, D.C. and that vacation. Symbols are such a clever way to express what she meant without just saying it.
I really enjoyed Lorde’s essay. The way she used word choice, tone, and symbolism made the story come alive to the reader. I really like the way that Lorde really never says anything straight up; you kind of have to read between the lines to get the symbolism. For those of us who didn’t grow up in that time period, or have never dealt with racial injustice, it might be hard for us to understand what Lorde went through. But through her words, her text, we feel what she felt. We understand the anger she felt when she discovered things weren’t as they seemed. I also like the abrupt change in the tone of the essay. All of a sudden the story had a whole new meaning. I really enjoyed analyzing this text because it was written so well with really interesting choice of words and other tools that Lorde used.