The Fire Next Time

What is the author's tone in The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin?

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Despite several apparent efforts at being objective, there is the overall sense that the author's writing is fueled by emotion. There is a very angry sense to its language, even in its moments of love and pleading (Section 1), of intellectual analysis (Section 2 Parts 1 and 3), and of relatively straightforward storytelling (Section 2 Part 2). The overall effect of this language is to create a sense of at times muted, at other times overt, bludgeoning. The author has a point to make, is determined to make it and has what seems to be perfectly valid reasons for that determination. Yet he seems to have allowed the emotional and/or experiential contexts for those reasons to affect his writing. The point must be made that this is not necessarily a bad thing. Blunt language is very often effective when waking readers up to an experience they have hitherto been unable, unwilling, or unprepared to have. The author no doubt feels he has to be blunt. He has to let people see his anger and fear and frustration and desperate love.

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The Fire Next Time