This essay examines whether there is a "secret" to justice by drawing on three literary works: Maya Angelou's autobiographical essay "Graduation," Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," and Ursula LeGuin's "Where Do You Get Your Ideas From." The paper argues that while justice and freedom may appear mystical or secretive, the writings of all three authors ultimately reveal that no hidden formula exists. Instead, justice is achieved through hard work, passion, collective action, and nonviolent resistance. The essay connects LeGuin's demystification of the writing process to King's and Angelou's demystification of white power, concluding that love, creativity, and perseverance are the true foundations of social justice.
This paper demonstrates comparative textual analysis across multiple primary sources. Rather than treating each essay in isolation, the writer uses LeGuin's argument about craft and myth to illuminate the social arguments made by King and Angelou. This cross-text synthesis — finding a unifying theme that no single text explicitly states — is a hallmark of strong literary analysis at the undergraduate level.
The essay opens with a broad historical framing of inequality before narrowing to its central question. It then moves through the three source texts — Angelou, LeGuin, King — in an interwoven rather than sequential fashion, returning to each author multiple times as the argument develops. The conclusion draws all three together to deliver a clear, direct answer to the opening question. Cited passages are well-integrated and supported with interpretation throughout.
The human race has been face-to-face with inequality and injustice since the beginning of time. First there was the inequality of religion, then the inequality of gender, the inequality of social status, and most recently the inequality of color. All of these inequalities have been challenged and dismantled one by one through the belief in freedom. Looking over the events that confronted inequality — such as the French Revolution and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech — a question comes to mind: Is there a "secret" to justice, and if so, what is it?
If there is a secret to justice, perhaps poets will be the first to tell. Maya Angelou, one of America's foremost poets, speaks to the spiritual secrets of African-Americans in her essay "Graduation." At the close of the autobiographical essay, Angelou states, "If we were a people much given to revealing secrets, we might raise monuments and sacrifice to the memories of our poets, but slavery cured us of that weakness" (134). What Angelou means is that poets are the protectors of deep wisdom, and that wisdom is to be considered sacred. Just as a shaman protects the secrets of his or her trade, a poet also cloaks secrets within the powerful disguise of imagery.
Angelou's reference to the veneration of poets is a subtle nod to the ways that African culture has traditionally valued the poet's power to protect the secrets that keep a people strong. White culture has been hostile to African culture, partly because whites are not privy to the secrets that African-Americans possess. Those secrets are directly related to justice, because they are the secrets of how to overcome oppression. "Slavery cured us of that weakness," Angelou says with sarcasm (134). Honoring poets as the protectors of secrets is far from a weakness; it is instead the greatest strength of a people to value poetry. It is poetry that bolsters the spirits of young African-Americans who might otherwise believe the lies of those who hold power.
The dominant culture has long taken for granted that whites are born free and in possession of political, economic, and social power. Known as white privilege, this apparently exclusive knowledge of how to gain power is not available to people of color. Angelou understands that people of color have their own secrets, and those secrets are equally valid and important as the privileges of whites — which are not secrets at all. The only secret to white power and privilege is the use of force over others.
Sometimes the things that seem most esoteric or secretive are actually not secrets at all. In "Where Do You Get Your Ideas From," Ursula LeGuin eliminates two of the most common myths about how fiction is written. The first myth is that there is some sort of "secret" to being a writer, and that writing is a mystical activity. The second myth is that stories start from ideas. LeGuin breaks down both of these myths. She claims that stories do not come from ideas, but from psychic material that has been digested and finally "composted" before it is possible to "grow a story" (537). The myth that writing requires knowledge of a secret is false for the plain reason that writing is real work. Writing requires skill, time, and commitment like any other job. Being a good writer does not involve any secret other than understanding the importance of practice, passion, and dedication.
LeGuin also notes that "there are so many variables, so many 'secrets,' some teachable and some not, that you can learn them only by methodical, repeated, long-continued practice" (536). A simple task can be mastered easily, and those in power were mistaken to assume that justice is something simple. From a position of privilege, it is easy to claim that justice does not require activism. In reality, justice requires a great deal of hard work. African-Americans have had to work harder than whites to prove their capabilities, just as women have had to work harder than men.
LeGuin further observes that "some of the secretiveness of many artists and writers about their techniques, recipes, etc., may be taken as a warning to the unskilled: What works for me isn't going to work for you unless you've worked for it" (536). There are many techniques that teachers can impart to students, but the student cannot simply learn a lesson once and become a master. It takes years to refine technique. This parallels the essence of King's argument in "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." Whites held tightly to the "secret" of social power. By not admitting how a position of power is maintained, they tricked people of color into believing a myth. As the myth lost its magic, people of color began to learn how to obtain power in different ways. Just as there is no single technique for writing or playing a guitar, there is no single technique for achieving justice. The learner practices in different ways until something clicks, and then repeats that method until it becomes second nature.
A personal story can illustrate how keeping secrets confers power. A grandmother who baked delicious cookies never shared her recipe. When guests asked what her "secret" was, she would laugh and say, "It's a secret" — and so people continued to believe her cookies were endowed with some magical quality. When asked why she never divulged her recipe, she said, "They wouldn't taste as good if they knew." In a small way, she held power over others through mystery. King implies something similar: whites allowed people of color to persist in the myth that racial hierarchy was naturally or even divinely ordained, thereby preserving their own authority.
The answer to the question "Is there a secret to justice?" is complex. On the one hand, there does seem to be a secret. How else would African-Americans like Maya Angelou overcome the types of institutionalized racism she encountered in the public school system, before she even had a chance to pursue upward social mobility? Writing poetry or science fiction as Ursula LeGuin does also seems like a secretive art reserved for a special few. Writers like Angelou, LeGuin, and King might appear to maintain the façade that secrets exist, but when we look closely at their writings, it becomes apparent that they want the world to know the truth: the only secrets to justice are love, creativity, passion, teamwork, and the willingness to work hard.
Angelou, Maya. "Graduation." Retrieved online:
King, Martin Luther. "Letter From Birmingham Jail." Occasions for Writing: Evidence, Idea, Essay. DiYanni, Robert, and Pat C. Hoy. Boston, MA: Thomson Heinle, 2008. 611–621. Print.
Le Guin, Ursula. "Where Do You Get Your Ideas From." Occasions for Writing: Evidence, Idea, Essay. DiYanni, Robert, and Pat C. Hoy. Boston, MA: Thomson Heinle, 2008. 536–541. Print.
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