Smiles hiding pain
Baldwin first brings up the image of hidden pain in reference to his brother. He remembers being able to wipe away his brother's tears, symbolizing his pain, when he was a child. These days, however, he knows that "no one's hand can wipe away those tears he sheds invisibly today, which one hears in his laughter and in his speech and in his songs." Later, in his second essay, Baldwin also illustrates Elijah Muhammad's smile as holding hidden pain, as well. He claims that the "central quality in Elijah's face is pain, and his smile is a witness to it—pain so old and deep and black that it becomes personal and particular only when he smiles." Both Baldwin's brother and Elijah Muhammad are illustrated as men whose smiles or laughter are tinged with a deep pain caused by their circumstances and mistreatment on the basis of their race. This image helps readers to understand how these black men were torn between daily joys and a more constant pain owing to their situations.
Walls
Baldwin refers to walls when discussing the limitations faced by black boys in America. Most poignantly, he discusses the ways in which his own fears blocked him from many potential paths by drawing on the image of a wall that rises "between the world and me." This image helps readers to understand just how intractable Baldwin's fears could be when he was an adolescent; they felt so solid and real to him that he compares them to a wall, preventing him from taking a number of paths. Instead, Baldwin is left only with the path to the church. The image of the "wall" recurs when he discusses the ways in which he and his peers felt trapped in and limited by the expectations and prejudices of the white world around them.
Crowds becoming one
Baldwin illustrates many religious experiences using the image of a group of people coming together in a shared, trance-like experience. This image can be invoked as either a negative or a positive, depending on circumstances. For example, when describing his experiences in church, he notes that one of the positive aspects of Christianity was that African Americans could come together over a common set of beliefs that helped them to forget the difficulty of their circumstances, or the troubles caused by "the man." They "ate and drank and talked and laughed and danced" all as one, and forgot about their problems. Later, when he encounters the Nation of Islam movement, he notes more negatively that a crowd of listeners "seemed to swallow this theology with no effort—all crowds do swallow theology this way, I gather." This image of a crowd of people all collectively "swallowing" the same ideas projects the way in which religion can bring people together for more nefarious purposes, as well; no one thinks on his own or separates from the crowd, but rather accepts what he is given whole because that is what everyone around him is doing. Thus, the illustration of a crowd becoming one can be both a joyful or unnerving image, depending on the context.
Fire
The image of fire helps Baldwin to illustrate key moments in his text. He first uses fire as a metaphor when describing his sexual awakening. For him, sexual experiments at this young age felt like they were "as hot as the fires of Hell." This image helps Baldwin to communicate just how intense and potentially harmful this period in his life was. At the end of the text, fire comes back as an important metaphor for vengeance. He makes use of a quote from a song inspired by the Bible, "No more water, but the fire next time!" to express that if his path of lovingly guiding white people to recognize their complicity in atrocities is not followed, then the only available option is "fire," or vengeance and violence. Here, the image of fire is contrasted with water, which serves as a more soothing and gentle alternative. By referencing fire, Baldwin makes clear that the kind of vengeance black people would pursue would be both passionate, intense, and destructive.
