Character Analysis
It's pretty lucky for us that since Malcolm X is the only character in his autobiography, he changes personalities enough times to flesh out an entire cast of characters. There's Malcolm Little, Malcolm the Mascot, Detroit Red, Satan, Malcolm X, and El Hajj Malik El Shabazz. Each one of those names represents a different side of Malcolm, each with its own particularities and personality. Sometimes it's amazing to think that all these things happened to one man.
But that shouldn't surprise us, since Malcolm even tells us why he wrote the autobiography. He says:
I want to say before I go on that I have never previously told anyone my sordid past in detail. I haven't done it now to sound as though I might be proud of how bad, how evil, I was. But people are always speculating—why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from birth, must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient. (9.129)
In other words, he knows that people must wonder how he became the famous man that we know as Malcolm X. His explanation? All of these different personalities are merged into one and make out the entire experience of his life.
So, let's start to meet all the different sides of this guy.
Malcolm Little, The Mascot
Malcolm X starts life as Malcolm Little. Isn't that name a letdown? Anyway, he's surrounded by trouble before he's even born. His dad is a follower of Marcus Garvey and gets killed by the Black Legion (a.k.a. the KKK but with black coats) when Malcolm is only six. Then his mom, after trying to provide for her huge brood of children, ends up having a mental breakdown. Malcolm and his siblings end up wards of the state.
Growing up without parents, Malcolm quickly gets on the wrong side of the law. Already, we see the impatience and determination to get what he wants that will define his personality. He says: “The more I began to stay away from home and visit people and steal from the stores, the more aggressive I became in my inclinations. I never wanted to wait for anything" (1.66). That attitude will get him into a lot of trouble in the future, but not yet.
Two things mark this period of Malcolm’s life: his attachment to his family (even though it's falling apart), and his lack of a distinct racial identity. Even though his father died spreading the message of Marcus Garvey, Malcolm doesn't know very much about the struggle of African Americans. He says:
In fact, by then, I didn't really have much feeling about being a Negro, because I was trying so hard, in every way I could, to be white. Which is why I am spending much of my life today telling the American black man that he's wasting his time straining to 'integrate.' I know from personal experience. I tried hard enough. (2.43)
It's almost surprising that this guy will grow up to be Malcolm X. He doesn't just lack a racial consciousness, but he actually is attempting to become as white as possible at this time in his life.
Detroit Red
This is not a good time for Malcolm. We're sure he would've disagreed at the time, but later even he would acknowledge that this is the lowest point of his life. He leaves Michigan for Boston and that's when it all begins. Malcolm falls into a life of crime, stealing and dealing drugs, and even carrying a gun. This quote should probably help you understand what kind of person he was at this time: “In those days only three things in the world scared me: jail, a job, and the Army" (6.115).
Malcolm was constantly on the run from the law, never held a steady or legal job, and had no respect for the government. When he goes to visit his friends after this transformation, no one can even believe how much of the degenerate he's become. We mean, he says, "I viewed narcotics as most people regard food." (9.31) Yeah, that's a pretty good sign that things aren't going so well for him. Time for an intervention.
While his first name is one he couldn't choose, it's important to look at the meaning behind all of the other names that Malcolm acquires. Instead of being called Malcolm, his name is Detroit Red through this period of life. That means two things define him: he's no longer an innocent city bumpkin, and his skin color.
When Malcolm gets this name, he is already integrated into city life. He has his zoot suit, he's straightened his hair, he talks jive, and he's learned how to dance. He's a certified city slicker.
As for his skin, red is a term used in some black communities to describe light-skinned black people. But the important thing about Malcolm isn't just that he's light-skinned, but why he's light-skinned. He's light-skinned because a white man raped his grandmother. But instead of seeing this as a negative event, Malcolm and his friends are proud of his relatively light skin color. That just shows you how far away he is from being a leader who champions the rights of black people and how ingrained in him racist culture is at this point.
Satan
This is a bad nickname. How bad do you have to be for prisoners to call you Satan? We're going to guess pretty bad.
Malcolm gets this nickname after he is sent to prison for burglary in Boston. Since he spends the majority of his time cursing at God and doing things that get him sent to solitary confinement, the other prisoners take to calling him Satan.
But let's look closer at that nickname. Satan was Lucifer, God's right-hand man, until he started to rebel against God and was kicked out of heaven. That's actually the complete opposite of Malcolm's experience while he's in jail. Instead of getting kicked out of heaven, being in prison is actually what allows Malcolm to become educated, join the Nation of Islam, and rise to prominence.
While he's in prison, Malcolm's brothers and sisters convert to the Nation of Islam and basically trick him into converting too. This, combined with the influence of a wise old man named Bimbi, leads Malcolm to get the education he never had by reading everything in the prison library. According to him, it might have been better this way:
I don't think anybody ever got more out of going to prison than I did. In fact, prison enabled me to study far more intensively than I would have if my life had gone differently and I had attended some college. I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions, too much panty-raiding, fraternities, and boola-boola and all of that. Where else but in a prison could I have attacked my ignorance by being able to study intensely sometimes as much as fifteen hours a day? (11.60)
We don't remember any boola-boola during our college days, but he's probably right about the studying.
The funny thing about Malcolm's nickname during this period of his life is not just that it comes from a story that follows a totally opposite path than he does, but also that it foreshadows the next chapter of his life story. He literally becomes the right-hand man to God and then gets shot down.
Malcolm X
Okay, this is where almost everyone comes in on the story of Malcolm's life. We all know him as the fiery minister of the Nation of Islam. We all know about the infamous "X."
Well, he gets here by working his butt off for Elijah Muhammad a.k.a. Allah according to the Nation of Islam. Malcolm is completely and totally dedicated to the cause of the Nation of Islam and Elijah Muhammad. He says: “This was my attitude. These were my uncompromising words, uttered anywhere, without hesitation or fear. I was his most faithful servant, and I know today that I did believe in him more firmly than he believed in himself" (12.136). If we didn't know better, we'd say that he was stalking the guy. But it was totally consensual.
Remember how we said that the Satan nickname was foreshadowing? After getting out of prison, Malcolm worked hard to become the number two man in the Nation of Islam. But when the religion (and as a result, Malcolm) starts to become prominent in the media, he gained a ton of haters.
The end of this stage in his life comes when Malcolm is kicked out of the organization that made him who he is. No wonder he says: “I felt as though something in nature had failed, like the sun, or the stars. It was that incredible a phenomenon to me—something too stupendous to conceive"(16.117). And this from a guy who never gets flustered or upset, even when his own father is cut in two by racists.
Let's go back to that X. Elijah Muhammad taught the members of the Nation of Islam that their last names were most likely the names of the white men who owned their ancestors during slave times. In order to be rid of that connection to oppression, members replaced their last names with the letter X.
For Malcolm, that X doesn't just symbolize a break with the oppression of his forefathers. It also symbolizes a break with all the other chapters of his life. We're pretty sure that if his friends who knew him as Detroit Red saw him on the street, they wouldn't recognize him. He's a totally different person.
It's kind of funny that the Malcolm X we are most familiar with is actually just another identity transformation completed by the man formerly known as Malcolm Little, isn't it?
El Hajji Malik El-Shabazz
Now it's time for the final transformation. Malcolm does some serious soul searching after he's kicked out of the Nation of Islam. He goes to Mecca, changes his name, and even decides that not all white people are evil.
Of course, this is not how he's mostly remembered. He knew that his legacy would focus on the Malcolm X period of his life. But this name—El Hajji Malik El-Shabazz—is the name that he chose to pass on to his children, so what does it tell us about how he has changed this time?
El Hajji is an honorific title given to Muslims who have successfully completed the Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, which is required of every able-bodied Muslim. Malik is an Arabic word meaning king, and it is also one of the names of Allah. Shabazz is, according to the Nation of Islam, an ancient scientist from Mecca who was the leader of the Tribe of Shabazz and the ancestor of all black people.
So the identity that Malcolm X was trying to create and solve is pretty clear. He emphasizes his connection to Islam by giving himself the title El Hajji. Even though he is no longer a member of the Nation of Islam, he reaffirms the connection to that with the name Shabazz. Finally, he aligns himself with royalty and probably overall awesomeness by choosing the name Malik. What a change from humble Malcolm Little!
But Malcolm X hasn't forgotten his past. He writes:
I believe that it would be almost impossible to find anywhere in America a black man who has lived further down in the mud of human society than I have; or a black man who has been any more ignorant than I have been; or a black man who has suffered more anguish during his life than I have. But it is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come; it is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come. (19.85)
It's only because he was Detroit Red, Satan, and even Malcolm X, that he was finally able to become El Hajji Malik El-Shabazz.
You could think of Malcolm X's final name as a dream. This is what he wanted to achieve with his life. He wanted to be great. But unfortunately, his life was cut short before his dream was fulfilled.
Malcolm X's Timeline