In the first essay of Notes of a Native Son, “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” Baldwin introduces the theme of comforting falsehoods. In writing about how the protest novel relies upon formulaic representations of humanity that disavow more complex realities, he suggests that “the formula created by the necessity to find a lie more palatable than the truth has been handed down and memorized and persists yet with a terrible power” (29). In philosophical traditions, ethics is often understood as referring to how one relates with reality. Relations that seek to evade reality are unethical. Misrepresenting reality, by presenting it as we wish it were rather than as it actually is, is one of the more common ways of being unethical. Such moves of evasion can be reduced to questions of truth, honesty, and fear.

Steeped in the Christian prophetic tradition as he was, Baldwin frequently spoke and wrote about the “terrible power” of lies (29). When we flee a discomforting reality in favor of a more comforting falsehood, Baldwin suggests we are diminished and end up perishing. The darkness of ambiguity, paradox, hunger, and danger, however, is where “we can find ourselves and the power that will free us from ourselves” (29).