SOURCE: "Hamlet, Malcolm X, and the Examined Education;" in CEA Critic, Vol. 57, No. 1, Fall, 1994, pp. 111-22.

In the following essay, Roark outlines the use of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and William Shakespeare's Hamlet as a means of illustrating to students the effect of external influences on their perceptions of the world.

Shakespeare's Hamlet and The Autobiography of Malcolm X, taught in conjunction, are useful texts for encouraging first-year writing students to examine how their educations are often a mix of conflicting influences. Both works can be used to provoke not only arguments and counter arguments regarding those influences but also practical action on the insights derived from such study. The usually debilitating "double consciousness" that permeates the thoughts of both Hamlet and Malcolm X can also suggest attitudes and techniques useful for student argumentative writing, especially when such a habit pushes both students and teachers to confront...