Read the following excerpt from James Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son":

But I knew that it was folly, as my father would have said, this bitterness was folly. It was necessary to hold on to the things that mattered. The dead man mattered, the new life mattered; blackness and whiteness did not matter; to believe that they did was to acquiesce in one's own destruction. Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated and this was an immutable law.

Which best explains how the use of parallelism in this excerpt supports Baldwin's purpose?

AIt emphasizes what Baldwin thinks matters and doesn't matter.
BIt uses contrasting ideas in the same sentence to emphasize their differences.
CIt employs a story-like structure to draw attention to theme of hatred.
DIt repeats the word folly to emphasize the mistakes white people have made.

The right answer for the question that is being asked and shown above is that: "D. It repeats the word folly to emphasize the mistakes white people have made." the statement that best explains how the use of parallelism in this excerpt supports Baldwin's purpose is that D. It repeats the word folly to emphasize the mistakes white people have made.

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Erudite1 Erudite1 · Answer 2 · 2018-07-14T11:31:47-04:00

The correct option is A.

Parallelism refers to the construction of sentences by using elements that are grammatically identical in structure, meaning or sound. Authors usually use parallelism in their works in order to draw the readers' attention to the similarity or the differences of ideas by the way they arrange them in the sentence. In the passage given above, Baldwin used parallelism in order to emphasize the things that are important and the things that are not.