Night Walker

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Night Walker

• By Brent Staples

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Pre-reading

• Do you agree that clothes make the man?

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Building vocabulary

• 1.
• A. threatingly
• B. not recognizableooze, pass through slowly
• C. eager, devoted
• D push ahead gradually but firmly
• E. susceptible to injury
• F. death causing
• G. false bravery
• H. suffocate
• I. Care, advance protection against danger
• J. cold and hard like steelthrusting forward

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Building vocabulary

• 2. Action victim, shoved, swung, cast back.
  pick up her pace, running, disappeared.
• Emotion mean, worried, menacingly, in earnest.
• It creates a suspenseful atmosphere suggests
  impending or potential violence.

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Understand the writers ideas

• 1. He portrays himself as a menacing figurethe
  way that white people often view him in such
  situations.

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Understanding the writers ideas

• 2. In Hyde Park, Chicago late one evening
  twenty-two (or youngish) taking a walk to
  relieve insomnia because she though he might be
  a mugger or rapist no, the term is applied
  ironicallyhe was surprised, embarrassed, and
  dismayed.

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Understand the writers ideas

• 3. Urban white peoples tendency to view him as a
  threat on the streetthe ability to alter public
  space in ugly ways. The implication is that in
  some white peoples eyes his presence can
  transform any locale into a dangerous place.

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Understand the writers ideas

• 4. Sensitive, intellectual, gentle. He shies away
  from violencehe even dislikes cutting up
  chicken. He describes this as an adaptation to a
  violent childhood environment where those who
  courted violence died or went to jail.

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Understand the writers ideas

• 5. People may react violently when the
  feelrightly or wronglythat they are being
  threatened with violence.
• 6. Defensive reactions to fearlocking car doors,
  crossing to the other side of the street.

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Understand the writers ideas

• 7. They thought he might break into their cars to
  rob them. He became accustomed to, but never
  comfortable with it.

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Understand the writers ideas

• 8. Chester, Pennsylvania, a small industrial
  town-he did not stand out against the more
  general level of violent crime there, and was
  presumably not considered a threat. Manhattan has
  so much side walk traffic that one-to-one
  encounters are not likely women in Brooklyn are
  highly sensitive to potentially dangerous
  situations and often act as if bracing themselves
  against a possible attack.

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Understand the writers ideas

• 9. Surprised (early on), understanding, but also
  angry. He has had to suppress the anger for the
  sake of his sanity. Keeping his distance from
  people waiting before following people into
  buildings so as not to seem to be tailing them
  whistling classic music.

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Understand the writers ideas

• 10. Police mistook the reporter for the suspect
  in the crime on which he was writing a background
  story. Only his press credentials saved him from
  being arrested.

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Understand the writers ideas

• 11. Not directly related in this essay, although
  security guards at his office mistook him for a
  burglar (par. 7), and he notes that tales of
  mistreatment by police are commonplace among
  black men.

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Understand the writers ideas

• 12. No. He acknowledges that young black men are
  drastically overrepresented among violent
  criminals.
• 13. They might assume that an educated, cultured
  individual (as someone who knows classical music
  would presumably be) would not be likely to
  attack them.

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Understanding the writers techniques

• 1. The fact that a black man walking in urban
  America will, to the majority of his white
  counterparts, be indistinguishable from predatory
  criminals, and will often be regarded as if he
  were one.

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Understanding the writers techniques

• 2. Night Walker could be the title of a
  suspense or horror storyexcites reader interest,
  as does the opening, My first victim. Both of
  these seem to promise excitement, action.

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Understanding the writers techniques

• 3. Staples uses the staccato narrative style and
  evocative diction of crime and spy stories to
  establish a suspenseful tone. The tone shifts in
  the second paragraph, where Staples dismantles
  the illusion that the previous passage was about
  an impending crime.

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Understanding the writers techniques

• 4. By not disclosing the actuality of his
  identity and relying on direct action narrative
  in par. 1, Staples allows the audience to view
  the incident through the eyes of a white person
  alone on the street at night. A less limited
  perspective is used in the narrative section of
  par. 7.

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Understanding the writers techniques

• 5. Heightens tensionundoes the effect suggested
  by discreet, uninflammatory distance in the
  previous sentence.
• 6. Par. 1 Description of his appearance conveys
  to readers why he might be perceived as menacing.
  Par. 5 Description of womens defensive
  reactions underscores the intensity of perceived
  threat.

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Understanding the writers techniques

• 7. Thunk, thunk, thunk of door locks in par.
  3allows the reader to feel more fully Stapless
  sense of alienation and embarrassment.
• 8. Seeing countless tough guys sent to prison
  the violent deaths of friends and family members
  his consequent desire to avoid a similar fate.

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Understanding the writers techniques

• 9. Hikers wear cowbells to alert bears to their
  presence will in advance bears, like people, may
  react violently when surprised or make afraid.
  Stapless whistling is like a cowbell in that it
  deters mistaken impressions on the part of those
  who share his nignttime environment.

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Understanding the writers techniques

• 10. In par. 1. Staples represents a visual
  stereotype of a dangerous black man only to
  show, as the essay unfold, how unreliable such
  stereotypes are.
• 11. The article is probably primarily intended
  for a white audiencethe mistakenness of the
  stereotypes Staples addresses and the anger and
  alienation they create are, as Staples suggests,
  commonplaces for many blacks.