Notes of a Native Son: A Question of Identity Summary & Analysis

The “American student colony” of Paris is hard to describe, despite the fact that almost all of these students share the experience of having served in the war. Military service is the defining experience of an entire generation of men, and has surely had a different impact on each of them. The question of why Americans in Paris have chosen to stay in Europe instead of returning home is also far from clear. Baldwin suspects that it is not love of French history or culture that brings Americans to study in Paris, nor the promise of better teaching than they would find in the States. Baldwin argues that American students tend to cling to an image of Paris they have been taught through film, and they thereby delay discovering the city as it really is. Myths state that people lose their “heads and morals” in Paris, bathing in the city’s atmosphere of freedom. However, Baldwin argues that these myths have little to do with reality.

Baldwin notes that it is easy to adore Paris while disliking the French, who tend to keep foreigners “at an unmistakable arm’s length.” Parisians tend to have little interest in the foreigners who live among them, and also tend to have less desire for the freedom and irresponsibility that Americans so enthusiastically exploit. Americans dislike being seen as indistinguishable from their countrymen, but this objection makes little sense to the French. For some Americans, the experience of freedom becomes so overwhelming that they begin to long for “the prison of home.” At this point, the American develops a perverse sense of enthusiasm about the United States, which comes to him just as easily as his initial rejection of his country.

Baldwin also considers the case of American students who adapt perfectly to the French lifestyle, cut off all ties to the United States, and live with a French family engaging in all the same activities as a truly French person. Yet Baldwin contends that these students actually hardly know more about France than those who do not assimilate to French culture at all. They remain entrenched in stereotypes about France, and even if they have many French friends this does not help them access the reality of France, as these friends remain an undifferentiated “mob.” Baldwin concludes that overall, most American students in Paris eventually lose a sense of their own personalities, and lose respect for other people’s personalities at the same time. In their confusion, they lose sight of the task of understanding themselves and the way in which all people are products of their environments. Europe presents a singular opportunity to “discover” the United States and end the sense of alienation from themselves that all Americans, on some level, feel.