Reading both Ruskin and Baldwin’s versions of their own open letters as well as their lectures was quite interesting, as the tones the authors took up were very different. In Ruskin’s pieces, his tone shifted from his lecture to his letters. In his lecture, his tone is quite rigid and academic and to be honest, I started to become a little bored after a while. Nonetheless, this provided the framework for his lecture to be highly informational and objective, which I assumed to be his goal. His letters, on the other hand, came across to me as rather conversational, playful, but also informative. This came across to me especially when he writes, “That last sentence is wonderfully awkward English, not to say ungrammatical; but I must write such English as may come today” (Ruskin, 323).

Baldwin’s tone remained the same in his lecture and letter to his nephew. In both these pieces, he writes with a sense of urgency and concern about America’s social climate. This is evident right off the bat when he says, “Let’s begin by saying that we are living through a very dangerous time” (Baldwin, 678). He goes on to explain in this lecture that this dangerous time is the erasure of black identity and opportunity by the dominating whiteness of society. He also stresses the importance of education as well as its paradox: that society encourages an education, but what education does is expose the broken framework of society. This tone of urgency and concern is paired with an overall sentiment of sadness and despair in his letter to his nephew, as he attempts to educate his nephew about the reality of society as his nephew prepares to emerge into young adulthood as a black man in a white society.