Just Walk On By

Just Walk On By is an essay driven by emotion and resentment. Brent Staples writes about his experiences of continually being mistaken for a criminal, as a young black male. Clearly, anger fuels Staples’ writing, yet he maintained a calmness throughout the essay and did not point fingers. He understood why females acted the way they did around him. They had a reason to: young black males are drastically overrepresented by perpetrators of street violence. Brent Staples learned this growing up around fellow African American men who ended up in jail.
At the beginning of the essay, Brent’s word choice was purposely misleading. He started out by saying, “My first victim was a woman…” This led me to think that the author was a criminal. But as I read on I realized that I had made the same mistake many other people had. As a young black male in Chicago, Brent Staples had been mistaken for a burglar, murderer, or simply a vicious man. He did an excellent job describing the fear he saw when he walked by people: “They seem to have their faces on neutral, and with their purse straps strung across their chests bandolier-style, they forge ahead as though bracing themselves against being tackled” (363).
There were a few rhetorical devices the author used that really helped him get his point across. An onomatopoeia is the use of words whose pronunciation imitates the sound the word describes. Staples uses this to create the atmosphere he often endured on pg 363 when he says, “I could cross in front of a car stopped at a traffic light and elicit the thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk of the driver- black, white, male, or female- hammering down the door locks.” Explaining how innocent he really is, Staples says, “As a softy who is scarcely able to take a knife to a raw chicken – let alone hold one to a person’s throat – I was surprised, embarrassed, and dismayed all at once” (pg 363). This is an example of an analogy, which compares two things.
In my opinion, the best use of a rhetorical device is the author’s last sentence when he uses a simile. It is about Staples’ whistling classical music being the “equivalent of the cowbell that hikers wear when they know they are in bear country” (pg 365). The cowbell is supposed to warn bears to stay away, just as Brent’s whistling warns concerned strangers that he is harmless. As a white female, it is impossible for me to completely understand the experiences of Brent Staples. Even though I too have been judged by my appearance, I have no idea what it’s like have people running from me, scared. The fact that Staples would have to walk by a building he was about to enter just because he doesn’t want skittish people to think he’s following them, is unacceptable. On the other hand, Chicago has some frightening people that might be harmful. It is a difficult topic to write about, however Brent Staples drew a great portrayal of his point of view.