At some point in almost every American child’s life, their parents told them to, “Be safe,” and, “Don’t get arrested.” This is because prison is not a lovely place, obviously. Ironically, for Malcom X, being admitted to prison was the best thing that happened to him. After dropping out of school in the eighth grade, he quickly found refuge among criminals on the street; this caused him to put his pursuit of an education on hold. When he was inevitably locked up for participating in criminal activities, X was no longer able to put effort into crime. Deciding to take on a new life, X taught himself how to read and write so he could effectively communicate with Elijah Muhammad, a member of the Nation of Islam. Without his access to books, he would never have been able to change who himself into the passionate, persuasive orator we know him as today. In Malcolm X’s, Learning to Read, he uses ethos and pathos to show the reader the importance of being literate.
X was sentenced in 1945, completely illiterate, at least in an academic sense. He was, however, literate on the streets. This was the case because a racist comment from his eight-grade teacher provoked him to drop out, and after leaving his education behind, X was left for gang members to swallow up. He soon became an influential gangster on the streets. Once he was sentenced, X joined the Nation of Islam and began attempting to communicate with Elijah Muhammad. He quickly realized that it wasn’t possible because of his illiteracy. This led to his obsessive study of the English language. He read day and night trying to teach himself words and how to apply them. He even went so far as to copy an entire dictionary that he accessed through the prison library. X did this because he knew the power of words and that by being literate, he could communicate effectively with the group that replaced his family of gangsters, the Nation of Islam. He soon began the painstaking first steps to becoming literate. He was able to do this because of the seemingly unlimited amount of time he had. The only obstacle that stood in front of him (“lights out”), he quickly overcame (X 109). He goes into detail of how he read once the lights were turned out for the night, saying that he used a light just outside of his cell. X typically stayed up well into the night, reading whatever he could. He understood that knowledge is a force to be reckoned with, so limiting himself to three or four hours of sleep a night was a necessary sacrifice. Later in the excerpt, X recounts information that he read about while in prison, saying that it altered the course of his life. It changed him because with every piece of information read, he better understood the circumstances of Black Americans, giving him the ability to attack the problem with more precision and accuracy. X even became interested in Philosophy, however, he focuses on the struggles of the black man. He addresses all black Americans when he prompts them to think about their human rights, then their civil rights will follow. To conclude his answer to the reporter, X explains that he continues to educate himself with the use of books, and that prison helped him begin the journey of self-education.
Learning to Read was written by Malcolm X in 1965 and published by Ballantine Books (X 106). The book was written in the height of the Civil Rights Movement, calling black Americans to pick up books so that they may educate themselves on the situation (“Civil Rights Movement). At this time, Malcolm X was speaking out against racism, attracting a lot of attention (“Timeline of Malcolm X’s Life”). In 1964, he attended an OAAU rally, and continued to support the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (“Timeline of Malcolm X’s Life”). After many people heard X speak, they wanted to know how and where he got his education (X 113). X laughed and told them that he had taught himself while in prison. He goes into more detail about this in Learning to Read. In 1954, Brown vs. Board of Education was the landmark case that shattered “Separate but equal.” Four years later, the Civil Rights Act of 1957 was put into effect. Despite these efforts, black Americans still faced a sickening amount of prejudice, especially in schools.
X wanted to demonstrate to the reader that being literate is an essential part of life, and he supports his claim by establishing his ethos. Why should people take advice from a previous convict? This is the exact question that X was worried readers would ask themselves, so he gives evidence of how books helped scrape up what was left of him and rebuild him into a man with the ability to command respect in the academic and religious community. X begins by explaining to the reader where he started, “I had been the most articulate hustler out there—I had commanded attention when I said something. But now, trying to write simple English, I not only wasn’t articulate, I wasn’t even functional” (X 107). With this quote, X demonstrates to the reader that he was educated on the streets but lacked writing skills. The books that he read, beginning with the dictionary, helped changed X into an entirely different person. X wrote, “I suppose it was inevitable that as my word-base broadened, I could for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying” (X 108). This was a direct result from him copying the dictionary word for word. X’s desire to write letters sparked his quest to begin his self-education, but that one book, the dictionary, lit a fire that craved knowledge as fuel. This was the start of X’s evolution through books.
X’s desire for knowledge only intensified and presented a world completely unknown to him, “Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened” (X 108). This world was completely different from that of a street hustler, continuing to develop his ethos. X was no longer interested in a life of crime and put all of his effort into reading to satisfy the fire that now burned inside him, “Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading on my bunk” (X 108). The reader may ask themselves if X was reading anything of value, or was he passing the time with books about hooligans participating in shenanigans? X reassures the reader that he was reading scholarly pieces of literature by including books and information that he read while in prison.
The books that X read helped shape him into the passionate orator and civil rights activist we know him as today. By including the exact books, X uses ethos to show how literature affected his life. He read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and an article from Life magazine, which both contained information on racist ventures by white people. The topics, such as slavery, that these books considered, deeply irritated X. He writes, “I perceived as I read, how the collective white man had been actually nothing but a piratical opportunist who used Faustian machinations to make his own Christianity his initial wedge in criminal conquests” (X 112). As he reads more, X becomes dedicated to helping the black man, “You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man” (X 113). Without those books, X may have returned to a life of crime when he got out of prison, but because of the knowledge he absorbed through books, he was introduced to a new world in which he could focus his interests on academics. Furthermore, by sharing the books that he read, X lays out a syllabus for whoever questions his teaching or his credibility. He almost challenges the reader to follow him and see if they end up with the same conclusions that he did.
Robots are mechanical machines, programmed to do one job as efficiently as possible, so if they wrote books, they’d be stern and to the point, but they’d be painfully boring. X uses a significant amount of pathos to avoid sounding like a robot. He does this perfectly when he talks about racist comments that were made in his history class, “I had never forgotten how when my class, me and all of those whites, had studied seventh—grade United States history back in Mason, the history of the Negro had been covered in one paragraph, and the teacher had gotten a big laugh with his joke, ‘Negroes’ feet are so big that when they walk, they leave a hole in the ground’” (X 110). The reader can immediately make an emotional connection with X if they have ever been made fun of before. Also, if you are a decent human being, you would side with X because a teacher spreading racism is quite frightening.
X continues to use pathos in the excerpt to develop his argument. After reading a significant amount, X began discovering atrocities committed by white people. This includes slavery in America, “I never will forget how shocked I was when I began reading about slavery’s total horror” (X 111). This quote evokes an emotional feeling into the reader’s emotions because it causes them to recall the first time they learned a shocking piece of evidence from a book, or more specifically, the first time they found about the horrors of slavery. X wants the reader to understand that he would never have known the true wickedness slavery if he were illiterate, “Books like the one by Frederick Olmstead opened my eyes to the horrors suffered when the slave was landed in the United States” (X 111). Again, books opened a new world for X. It altered his life forever, “I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life” (X 113). Through this, X furthers his use of pathos by allowing the reader to reflect on something that altered their life.
The comment that was made by X’s eight grade teacher caused him to drop out of school. After dropping out, his circumstances snowballed. When X landed himself in prison, he was illiterate and had the handwriting of a second grader. However, with the help of a dictionary, X was able to teach himself how to read and write like a grown adult should be able to. He didn’t stop there. No, X continued reading. In fact, X read profusely and developed a love for it. Because of the books he read, X’s life was forever altered, and he uses ethos and pathos to show this to the reader. X became a passionate, persuasive orator and writer because of the hard work and dedication he put into studying literature; a far cry from the hustler he was.
Works Cited
X, Malcolm. “Learning to Read.” Writing About Writing. 3rd ed., edited by Elizabeth Wardle,
Doug Downs, bedford/st.martin’s, 2017, pp. 106-115.
Mamiya, Lawrence. “Malcolm X American Muslim Leader.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 01 Feb
2019, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Malcolm-X
“Civil Rights Movement.” History.com,
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-movement. Accessed 3 July 2019.
“Plessy v. Ferguson.” History.com,
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson. Accessed 3 July 2019
“Timeline of Malcolm X’s Life.” Pbs.org
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/malcolmx-timeline-malcolm-xs-life/. Accessed 3 July 2019.
Helped Received:
Peer responses with Aidan Rice, Suggestions from LTC Ticen, class discussion, Thesaurus.com, Dictionary.com, Google, Writing About Writing, The Everyday Writer