final draft of paper

Ashley Buckner
Sept. 27, 2007
English 1010



Textual Analysis of “The Fourth of July”

The short narrative “The Fourth of July” by Audre Lorde is the autobiographical account of a young girl’s first trip to Washington, D.C. and how that trip made her “leave childhood” when she realized exactly what racism was. Her family went to Washington, D.C. the summer of 1947
as a graduation present for her and her older sister, graduating the eighth grade and high school, respectively. Lorde uses many distinct descriptions throughout her narrative, such as color, along with allusion. The tale is told from the first-person point of view, but the author is an adult, looking back on her childhood.

“The first time I went to Washington, D.C., was on the edge of the summer when I was supposed to stop being a child. At least that’s what they said to us all at graduation from the eighth grade.” These opening sentences to the passage give one the feeling of talking to a child, which gives one the feelings of familiarity and innocence, as children usually tell what they observe, in their own view, not what is grammatically correct or proper.

The author mentions that this trip was the first time she had been on a train during the day, because when she was a little girl, they only took the milk train at night because her parents said that it was cheaper. There is an unintentional allusion to the Underground Railroad in this statement. The Underground Railroad was a system of people who would house fugitive slaves on their way to freedom in the free states and Canada. This was done in the night time to prevent the participants from being caught, thus the allusion. However, the trains she is talking about in this statement were going towards the south, not the north.

Lorde uses color when describing the foods that her mother packed for them, and uses white when describing the light and the city, showing the importance of the difference of “colored and white.” She uses the colors brown, green and “violently yellow” to describe the food, while when describing the city, she says that everything was white, including the ice cream that she never got to eat. She observes that “even the pavement on the streets was a shade lighter in color than back [in New York].” This is a bit of an allusion to the fact that they are in a city that is southern, compared to New York City, where they are from. Also, New York is the entrance to our country from Europe and the western side of Africa, so it has more of the various cultures that have entered and made up our country. Therefore, the streets and buildings in New York are more “colored” with the different cultures, as opposed to the very “white” streets and buildings of Washington, D.C. She also describes her parents, and that her father was black, but her mother looked “so much like one of those people [they] were never supposed to trust” (talking about white people). This leads the reader to conclude that her mother was mixed, especially when the author states that her mother’s sisters are the same color as her mother. Lorde then explains that she is dark like her father, and her sisters’ colors are somewhere in between their mother and father.

Lorde is in-between many situations in the passage. She is a color in-between her parents, and she is in the summer in-between eighth grade and high school. She is now becoming a teenager, so she is in-between childhood and adulthood. Her parents have sheltered her as best as they could from racism all of her life, so she is in-between innocence and learning about the real world. She doesn’t quite know what all is going on in the world, so she is undoubtedly quite confused about her life at this point in the autobiography. This trip most likely changed her perception of many things in life. She was a thirteen year-old child who realized that even in the capital city of the country that is based on the foundations of “all men are created equal,” many people are still set back and given the disadvantage of situations, based solely on their skin color. To realize this must be heart breaking to anyone, especially a child on the disadvantaged side. This experience is enough to scar anyone for the rest of their lives, but she uses the experience to tell others the kind of situations she faced everyday from when she was a child until she was in her early forties.

The passage “The Fourth of July” from Audre Lorde’s autobiography portrays how racism is seen through a young girl’s eyes. This experience is what made her “stop being a child.” It showed her things that no one, especially a child, should have to experience: the knowledge that someone cannot accept them for who they are just due to their skin color. Lorde’s use of first-person narration through a child’s view, her use of color, and unintentional allusion, help convey the message that racism was a problem even in the capital of the country that is based on the principle of “all men are created equal.” Apparently, that phrase took a long time to finally catch on.