Coming to an Awareness of Language – Malcolm X

Coming to an Awareness of Language – Malcolm X

This essay is interesting in that it takes a common, illiterate criminal with poor handwriting from a bad neighborhood and turns him into a self-educated man. The author’s writing technique opens the story from his past as one not for inaction and uses that as his excuse for writing, just something to do. He could not write well and could not understand what he read, so he took action and acquired a dictionary. From that one tool, and his pen and paper, he entered a world unknown to him. The dictionary helped him read and write and changed who he was, allowing freedom even in prison.

In the beginning, I did not care for the man he was, but learned to appreciate him throughout the essay for his desire and dedication to learn on his own and better him. He could have just done his time, but instead, he did something worthwhile with his time. He ended up with more freedom from self-education than through reentering the outside world, and became a better person in the process. This is a well-written expressive essay using his personal experience of imprisonment to better him. He developed it through narration and description organized in chronological order.