Mr. Z

I am kind of proud of myself because I think I partly understand the Poem "Mr. Z" just by reading it multiple times and not having to use any other source to understand it. Each stanza seems to go through a different phase in his life in which the first deals with his entire childhood and how he dealt with racial pressures until the last stanza that mentions the character's death. While the poem never directly addresses how the character is someone of another race, many clues are given to confirm this observation. For example the first line states, "taught early that his mother's skin was the sign of error" shows that he was never ignorant of the fact that he and his family and anyone of his race were looked down upon simply because of the color of his skin. Thoough, the first stanza goes on to descibe that he did not let this fact affect him. He tried hard at everything he did and would chose "raceless views of each situation." However, when trouble came to him about racial issues, he dealt with it. But I'm going to skip to the last line which I think criticizes viewing people not as a whole, but by their race. The writer's acclaim the man as the "most distinguished [member] of his race" instead of viewing him as a person all of humanity. I'm sure if it were a white person, the writer's would say, "one of the most distuinguished people to ever live."