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Braden Burge
Jackie Burr
30 Oct. 2019
Prison is a great place to get an education and you have all the time you ever wanted
to study. At least according to Malcolm X, who learned how to read and write in prison.
Malcolm X’s experience is talked about in the excerpt called “Learning to Read” from the
autobiography by Alex Haley. Malcom refers to his time in prison as his journey of self-teaching
and studying. This passage is enhanced by Malcom’s use of meaningful personal experiences;
however, toward the end of the article he starts to focus on racism and it feels like the paper turns
into an argumentative paper, encouraging violence and extensive measures to ensure equality
which overall throws off the rhythm and pace of the passage.
In “Learning to Read,” Malcolm first refers to how he was able to communicate only in
slang terms or unrefined sentences. He then mentions that he owes his whole education to prison.
He discovered his desire to learn when he tried to write letters but decided that slang would not
be the best language to use to write to his personal hero, Mr. Elijah Muhammad. His first step in
his quest for education was to request materials from his prison. When he received the tablets
and the dictionary that he requested, he began by writing down the whole first page and reciting
it to himself. The next day he would repeat the process with the second page and re-learn the
words he forgot. After doing this with the entire dictionary, Malcolm found he could
comprehend and read entire books. Malcolm continues to describe how he was able to study for
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hours upon hours, even when he wasn’t supposed to. For example, Malcolm expressed this by
mentioning:
When I had progressed to really serious reading, every night at about ten p.m. I would be
outraged with the “lights out.” It always seemed to catch me right in the middle of
something engrossing. Fortunately, right outside my door was a corridor light that cast a
glow into my room. The glow was enough to read by, once my eyes adjusted to it. So
when “lights out” came, I would just sit on the floor where I could continue reading in
He continues by saying how, once every hour, guards would come by and he would pretend to
be asleep. Malcolm then begins to learn things from other subject areas including; history,
science, and math. One topic that stays common throughout the whole piece is the concept of
Malcom X uses his personal experiences to appeal to pathos. He opens up with his first
reason to learn, “In the street, I had been the most articulate hustler out there…[b]ut now, trying
to write simple English, I not only wasn’t articulate, I wasn’t even functional” (257). This
sentence shows the starting point for Malcolm in his educational life. Most people nowadays
understand the feeling of not being the one that knows everything, but instead, the one that is
being taught something that is difficult to understand. The embarrassing moment of being
confident in a topic then being torn down by a bad score on a test that you had so much
confidence in. Malcom X knew this when he wrote about his embarrassment. He wrote that
particular example to intrigue the reader and get them to continue reading.
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suppose it was inevitable that as my word-base broadened, I could for the first time pick up a
book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying” (259). Some would say
that Malcolm X’s improvement is enough and that studying past that point would be extra credit
or overkill. But to him stopping there would be like a doctor learning human anatomy but not
studying how to fix a problem. Malcolm X continued to learn and strive for greatness. He was
more ways to learn and what to do with that knowledge. As he tries to expand his knowledge to
all different types of subject areas he finds a quote from Mr. Muhammad that stresses how
history was “whitened” (260). In Malcolm X’s continual attempts to convince the reader of the
history book’s inaccurate representation he states, “You can hardly show me a black adult in
America-or a white one, for that matter- who knows from the history books anything like the
truth about the black man’s role” (261). This fact affected him personally and he set out to find
more about the past of blacks and the importance they played. In his research, he was able to find
some compelling facts from many different sources. One source was from a book on genetics
If you started with a black man, a white man could be produced; but starting with a white
man, you never could produce a black man-because the white gene is recessive. And
since no one disputes that there was but one Original Man, the conclusion is clear. (261)
With this fact, Malcolm X is implying that the first man had to have been black because genetics
state that white men can’t create black men. Malcolm X knew that when he said this that many
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people would reply with negative comments or unpleasant reactions because of the fact that what
he said is against what most religions believe and against the norm of society.
Throughout Malcolm X’s work, personal experiences continue to support his message
and appeal to pathos. Malcolm X concludes by mentioning, “Every time I catch a plane, I have
with me a book that I want to read...If I weren’t out here every day battling the white man, I
could spend the rest of my life just reading” (266). This shows his dedication to learn and that
the learning never ends. Even though Malcolm X started focusing more on racism instead of
education and personal learning, his writing was able to keep the message together and correctly
deliver it to the rest of the world. Although his topic isn’t always something that someone will
remember, the lasting impact of this topic will continue to affect many lives to come.
Work Cited
X, Malcom. “Learning to Read.” 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology. Ed. Samuel Cohen. New