Baldwin’s language in his letter “My Dungeon Shook,” to vastly oversimplify, works. However, I contend this is mainly because it was presented as an intimate piece of writing, in which the specific wording and tone as read have significant meanings that may be lost if they were in a traditional argumentative essay or spoken. Lines like “you must survive because I love you,” “these men are your brothers,” and several other instances of using the second person singular are effective in imparting emotion, where a formal argument would fall short.

The main difference in how Baldwin presents himself between the two pieces is in his claim to authority. In “My Dungeon Shook,” he explicitly writes “Take no one’s word for anything, including mine,” a sharp contrast to his arguments in his “A Talk to Teachers.” While he does acknowledge, “I am talking to schoolteachers and I am not a teacher myself,” he generally makes more of an appeal to authority, mainly based off of his own experiences, saying things like “I was a street boy, so I know,” a nontraditional appeal to authority, but one all the same. This makes perfect sense given the format; he is attempting to convince his audience of something, so some measure of authority is necessary, while in the letter it is not.