Stranger in the Village

In “Stranger in the Village,” Baldwin employs parallelism numerous times in order to make his argument clear. Parallelism is when the author uses a parallel construction of words, sentences, or even paragraphs or ideas. Baldwin often uses semi-colons to separate the parallel sides. Take, for instance, the opening sentence to the final paragraph: “The white man’s motive was the protection of his identity; the black man was motivated by the need to establish an identity” (127). Baldwin’s parallel use of “motive” and “motivation” in relation to the repeated use of “identity” serves to contrast Black and white men. More broadly, Baldwin uses the parallel construction between white Americans and white Europeans to emphasize that the former cannot lay claim to the same kind of ignorance—born of unfamiliarity—that still exists in the Swiss village.

Connotation is the impact of a word that extends beyond its dictionary definition (or its “denotation”). Baldwin uses this when he describes the “custom in the [Swiss] village […] of ‘buying’ African natives for the purpose of converting them to Christianity” (119-20). The word “buying” is in scare quotes to draw the reader’s attention to it, with the effect that it is offset from its usual meaning. In the context Baldwin has introduced in his essay, namely Western history, the “buying” of Africans by Europeans takes on a very specific meaning. Baldwin thus invokes the memory of the trans-Atlantic trading of enslaved people and the European-African history of enslavement without specifically mentioning them, apart from this connotative quote. At a meta-prose level, Baldwin writes about the different connotations of the cathedral at Chartres for himself and white people (128).

An assertion, like those Baldwin makes throughout his essay, is a statement that presents itself as truth. Although it is an argumentative essay, Baldwin’s assertions are slanted toward the end of the piece instead of appearing at the beginning, as is more common. For example, consider the opening of Baldwin’s concluding paragraph: “The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new black man, it has created a new white man, too” (129). Baldwin is stating something that has not been accepted previously (“The time has come to realize” [129]) but that he believes and has argued is true (“it has created a new white man, too” [129]). Baldwin also makes a double assertion: “The identity of the American Negro comes out of this extreme situation, and the evolution of this identity was a source of the most intolerable anxiety in the minds and the lives of his masters” (125). The first claim, about the identity of American Black people, is followed by a claim about white Americans’ response to that identity.