Equal in Paris Analysis

(1) On the nineteenth of December, in 1949, when I had been living in Paris for a little over a year, I was arrested as a receiver of stolen goods and spent eight days in prison. (2) My arrest came about through an American tourist whom I had met twice in New York, who had been given my address and told to look me up. (3) I was then living on the top floor of a ludicrously grim hotel on the rue du Bac, one of those enormous dark, cold, and hideous establishments in which Paris abounds that seem to breathe forth, in their airless, humid, stone-cold halls, the weak light, scurrying chambermaids, and creaking stairs, an odor of gentility long, long dead. (4) The place was run by an ancient Frenchman dressed in an elegant black suit which was green with age, who cannot properly be described as bewildered or even as being in a state of shock, since he had really stopped breathing around 1910. (5) There he sat at his desk in the weirdly lit, fantastically furnished lobby, day in and day out, greeting each one of his extremely impoverished and louche lodgers with a stately inclination of the head that he had no doubt been taught in some impossibly remote time was the proper way for a proprietaire to greet his guests. (6) If it had not been for his daughter, an extremely hardheaded tricoteuse --- the inclination of her head was chilling and abrupt, like the downbeat of an ax --- the hotel would certainly have gone bankrupt long before. (7) It was said that this old man had not gone farther than the door of his hotel for thirty years, which was not all difficult to believe. (8) He looked as though the daylight would have killed him.

When James Baldwin found himself in Paris for the first time, he was hoping to escape the torturous racism and hatred of the United States. He soon learned that he could never run away from prejudice.

The first sentence of Baldwin’s passage catches the reader’s eye, stating what happened, where it happened, why it happened, but not yet how it happened. Baldwin uses many prepositions and added details to provide the reader with a sense of imagery to the time and place that he is in (1). Remaining purely factual, Baldwin goes on to tell the reader that his arrest had come about through an American tourist whom he had hardly known (2). The sentence following is extremely long, telling the reader where he had been staying in Paris, providing imagery of the hotel with plenty of description. It is interesting that Baldwin describes the hotel as grim and disgusting, as the reader may have previously thought that Paris was only full of beautiful things. Continuing his description, Baldwin describes the “Frenchman” who ran the hotel, using an adverb clause to describe an elegant black suit “which was green with age” (4). Baldwin provides humor, stating that the man had “really stopped breathing around 1910” (4). Baldwin’s description of the man who runs the hotel is just as grim as his description of the hotel itself. He goes on to describe the man, stating that he never moved from his desk, and only slightly tipped his head to acknowledge guests. In this same sentence, Baldwin uses multiple french terms like “louche” and “proprietaire” (5). Baldwin does this to incorporate his own knowledge of France, and the fancy terms also show the contrast between the French language and this odd, ghostly hotel. The following sentence describes the man’s daughter, using dashes to set off “the inclination of her head was chilling and abrupt, like the downbeat of an ax” (6). The descriptions that Baldwin provides of the French people make them seem to be strict and mean. The end of the passage states, “He looked as though daylight would have killed him” (8). This simile that Baldwin uses to describe the owner of the hotel is especially stony and uninviting.

This paragraph that opens up the story “Equal in Paris” provides the eerie, creepy imagery of the hotel which the reader needs in order to connect Paris as a place that is not as beautiful as it seems. Baldwin goes on to parallel this grim hotel with the horrible outcome of “stealing” a bed sheet, which is when he gets arrested. Baldwin learns through this period in Paris that there is a “universal laughter which can’t be stilled.” The racism that he encountered in the United States would follow him for the rest of his life.