Shame

            Activist, Dick Gregory, in his narrative essay, “Shame”, discusses his first encounter with shame as a young boy who was living in poverty. Gregory wrote this essay to share how his first experience with shame had affected him. Gregory establishes his purpose by using negative diction, figurative language, and personal-case examples.

            Gregory frequently used negative diction throughout his essay to establish his purpose. By using negative diction the author could get a sense of how he feels toward the situation. At the bottom of page 279 the author states, “The teacher thought I was stupid. Couldn’t spell, couldn’t read, couldn’t do arithmetic. Just stupid.” Not only does the author use words with a negative connotation such as stupid and couldn’t, but he repeats them to exaggerate the bad experience he had. The author’s manipulation of these words with negative connotations radiates a feeling of despair or shame. It lets the reader know that Gregory felt shame in the fact that his teachers thought he was “stupid”. The effect that the use of these words bring is evident and made a clear distinction of his purpose.

            Gregory also utilized figurative language to share his purpose. On page 280 Gregory states, “I was pregnant with poverty. Pregnant with dirt and pregnant with smells that made people turn away, pregnant with cold and pregnant with shoes that were never bought for me, pregnant with five other people in my bed and no Daddy in the next room, and pregnant with hunger.” In this quote Gregory introduces his feeling of shame by using a metaphor to compare poverty to a word with a negative connotation, a process that takes a long time, pregnancy. By comparing poverty to pregnancy the reader can associate the long process to poverty and see how the author truly felt about living in poverty. The author’s use of this extended metaphor makes the reader try to view the situation through his eyes, how living with no dad and 5 other siblings and nothing to eat must feel. His shame was in the fact that he had no dad, that he was living in poverty, and by writing this metaphor the author made that clear to the reader.

            Throughout the essay Gregory is describing a personal-case example and many details from his personal-case examples contributed to his purpose. By using personal-case examples the author can share his own experience concerning shame and that’s exactly what Gregory did. On page 281 it says “’My daddy said he’d give… fifteen dollars.’ . . . I was crying too.” These sentences describe the first time Gregory felt shame, the author was ashamed because the teacher embarrassed him by basically calling him poor in front of his class and his crush. By sharing his first-hand experience the author shares his experience with shame and how it deeply upset him. The author carries this personal-case example with him forever and will always recognize it as the first time he felt shame and therefore directly contributed to his purpose. He felt shame because he was a boy living in poverty and had no control over that and it affected him greatly.

People face shame regularly and Gregory was brave to share his experience with many readers. By doing this he lets the reader know shame is common and that no one is alone. Gregory is just one among billions of people who have experienced shame in a lifetime.