In The Fourth of July, by Audre Lorde, the main theme is silence and the idea of not being a child anymore. “The first time I went to Washington, D.C., was on the edge of summer when I was supposed to stop being a child” (Lorde, 567). In the essay, the author identifies with 8th grade graduation as being the end of childhood. She also states how it was high school graduation for her older sister and she wasn’t sure of what she was supposed to “stop being”. Silence as a main theme is apparent in the essay by the author describing her parents as quiet after they are asked to leave an ice cream parlor because they are black. “My parents wouldn’t speak of this injustice, not because they had contributed to it, but because they felt they should have anticipated it and avoided it” (Lorde, 569). The author also states something pertaining to silence about her mother, “As usual, whatever my mother did not like and could not change, she ignored. Perhaps it would go away, deprived of her attention” (Lorde, 568).
Lorde uses many different things throughout the essay to describe and help the reader to really see what’s going on. She uses the descriptions of food at the beginning of the essay as a way to vividly show colors used throughout the paragraph. It also seems like a metaphor to the overall theme of black vs. white. Lorde describes her family as different in the sense that they were all somewhat of a different color. “But something always warned me not to ask my mother why she wasn’t white, and why auntie Lillah and auntie Etta weren’t, even though they were all that same problematic color so different from my father and me, even from my sisters, who were somewhere in between” (Lorde, 568). The whole reason the author and her family are in Washington, D.C. is because her older sister, Phyllis, was the only black person in her graduating class and the nuns at her school gave her back the money she had paid for the trip because she would have had to stay somewhere different and wouldn’t be comfortable. That and when the family went into the ice cream parlor and were told they could only take it to go are both examples of race related prejudice for them during the summer of 1947. The whole idea of not being a child anymore is another thing to be taken into context. The emphasis on the color white throughout the essay could almost be considered as a metaphor for white being a symbol of innocence. Another way the author conveys her ideas is through her description of the Lincoln Memorial. “[…] and I spent the whole next day after Mass squinting up at the Lincoln Memorial where Marian Anderson had sung after the D.A.R. refused to allow her to sing in their auditorium because she was black” (Lorde, 568).
Both the incident in the ice cream parlor and the trip as a whole had made Lorde hate the Fourth of July. “The waitress was white, and the counter was white, and the ice cream I never ate in Washington, D.C., that summer I left childhood was white, and the white heat and the white pavement and the white stone monuments of my first Washington summer made me sick to my stomach for the whole rest of that trip and it wasn’t much of a graduation present after all” (Lorde, 570). This quote is an example of why she dislikes the holiday, all because of one bad experience; an experience that was supposed to be a family vacation but really turned into a frustrating and angry experience for her. Another factor that should be kept in mind about why Lorde was bothered so much about her vacation is because of the fact that black people weren’t allowed to eat in railroad dining cars. “I wanted to eat in the dining car because I had read all about them, but my mother had reminded me for the umpteenth time that dining car food always cost too much money and besides, you never could tell whose hands had been playing all over that food, nor where those same hands had been just before. My mother never mentioned that black people were not allowed into railroad dining cars headed south in 1947” (Lorde, 568).
Once again, the main theme’s in this essay is silence, like her parents after the ice cream incident, and not being a child anymore, like her anger toward the racism and actually deciding to write a letter to the President herself, as an almost 9th grader. It’s both disturbing and sad that people were so shallow and ignorant then that they wouldn’t even allow someone with a different skin color in to a dining car or ice cream parlor, to name a few places.
Lorde uses many different things throughout the essay to describe and help the reader to really see what’s going on. She uses the descriptions of food at the beginning of the essay as a way to vividly show colors used throughout the paragraph. It also seems like a metaphor to the overall theme of black vs. white. Lorde describes her family as different in the sense that they were all somewhat of a different color. “But something always warned me not to ask my mother why she wasn’t white, and why auntie Lillah and auntie Etta weren’t, even though they were all that same problematic color so different from my father and me, even from my sisters, who were somewhere in between” (Lorde, 568). The whole reason the author and her family are in Washington, D.C. is because her older sister, Phyllis, was the only black person in her graduating class and the nuns at her school gave her back the money she had paid for the trip because she would have had to stay somewhere different and wouldn’t be comfortable. That and when the family went into the ice cream parlor and were told they could only take it to go are both examples of race related prejudice for them during the summer of 1947. The whole idea of not being a child anymore is another thing to be taken into context. The emphasis on the color white throughout the essay could almost be considered as a metaphor for white being a symbol of innocence. Another way the author conveys her ideas is through her description of the Lincoln Memorial. “[…] and I spent the whole next day after Mass squinting up at the Lincoln Memorial where Marian Anderson had sung after the D.A.R. refused to allow her to sing in their auditorium because she was black” (Lorde, 568).
Both the incident in the ice cream parlor and the trip as a whole had made Lorde hate the Fourth of July. “The waitress was white, and the counter was white, and the ice cream I never ate in Washington, D.C., that summer I left childhood was white, and the white heat and the white pavement and the white stone monuments of my first Washington summer made me sick to my stomach for the whole rest of that trip and it wasn’t much of a graduation present after all” (Lorde, 570). This quote is an example of why she dislikes the holiday, all because of one bad experience; an experience that was supposed to be a family vacation but really turned into a frustrating and angry experience for her. Another factor that should be kept in mind about why Lorde was bothered so much about her vacation is because of the fact that black people weren’t allowed to eat in railroad dining cars. “I wanted to eat in the dining car because I had read all about them, but my mother had reminded me for the umpteenth time that dining car food always cost too much money and besides, you never could tell whose hands had been playing all over that food, nor where those same hands had been just before. My mother never mentioned that black people were not allowed into railroad dining cars headed south in 1947” (Lorde, 568).
Once again, the main theme’s in this essay is silence, like her parents after the ice cream incident, and not being a child anymore, like her anger toward the racism and actually deciding to write a letter to the President herself, as an almost 9th grader. It’s both disturbing and sad that people were so shallow and ignorant then that they wouldn’t even allow someone with a different skin color in to a dining car or ice cream parlor, to name a few places.
