Paranoia has two definitions in the dictionary. The first deals with the type of paranoia that is classified as a “mental illness” in which a sufferer experiences delusions of persecution. The second definition describes paranoia as a tendency, rather than a mental illness, of someone toward excessive distrust of others. During class this week, the question about whether our narrator, Ben, in Himes’s If He Hollers Let Him Go is paranoid. Judging by both definitions that have been put forth above, I believe it to be the case that he is not portrayed as paranoid, at least when it comes to white people, in the text.
First of all, I think it is important to establish the reason for why I am discussing his paranoia with respect to white people rather than another thing or group of people. Up to this point in the story, Ben’s negative experiences have been almost exclusively in his interactions with white people. One notable exception is the conversation that he has with Alice’s mother, Mrs. Harrison. Alice and Mrs. Harrison are both black, but as Ella Mae points out, Alice is the “whitest coloured girl [Ben] could find.” Beyond Alice’s whiteness, her mother can be described as, at the very least, a white apologist. As a rich woman with a $3,000 carpet (which today is close to $60,000), Mrs. Harrison more closely resembles white people of her day than most black people. Most importantly, Mrs. Harrison repeatedly blames black people for their own mistreatment from white people. Her rationalization of the Los Angeles racism of the day comes across as severely out of touch with reality. This naturally rubs Ben the wrong way and represents the only significant negative experience that he has with non-white people thus far.
Since race, up to this point, has been the main driver of conflict in the novel then, it makes sense to consider the white people as the main object of Ben’s potential paranoia. In order to dispel the notion of Ben’s paranoia, I will focus in on two scenes in which he has interactions with white people. The first scene to focus on is Ben’s gambling session with the white men – one of whom knocks Ben out and becomes the object of his murderous fantasy. In this scene, Ben is shooting dice and is running very well to the point that he has earned over $30. A blonde white man, infuriated by Ben’s perceived luck, resolves to “cool” him, which turns out to be his way of saying that he will knock Ben out. The important part of this scene for my purposes, though, is Ben’s actions before getting assaulted. After winning several times, a paranoid narrator would almost certainly reveal his internal fear to the reader, and probably display it through their actions as well. Ben, however, shows no fear. When someone yells out that the game is invalid because the last roll was determined by reading “cocked dice,” Ben responds forcefully. He says that he will not give away a “goddamned thing.” Doubling down, he continues, “I made my goddamned eleven and now I’m gonna take my goddamned money.” This, as far as I am concerned, is not the response of a paranoid black man that is scared of the white people he is surrounded by. Perhaps it can be argued that he is paranoid in this scene, but is so fed up with the day that he has had that he digs his heels in and decides not to back down this one time, but I believe that the next scene serves to further dispel the narrative of his paranoia.
The second important scene to discuss is when he is riding in the car with the two white men – one from San Francisco and the other from Memphis. In this scene, not only does he have a civil conversation with the two men, he actually reveals that he genuinely likes them. This scene, coming chronologically after he is knocked out, demoted, and belittled by white people, would be a narrative impossibility if Ben was already paranoid. Ben wonders when “white people started getting white.” He is grasping with the reality that you can look at two white people from the same place, and end up with one who carries his whiteness like a “loaded stick” and one who carries his whiteness “as if he didn’t have anything to do with it.” Such a cerebral observation by Ben, I am arguing that this absolutely dispels the argument that he is paranoid at this point in the book.
A black narrator paranoid about white people does not react in the ways that Ben did when confronted with the two previously discussed scenarios. As the story moves forward, I will keep a close eye on whether or not evidence of paranoia begins to surface, or if Ben remains simply cynical (but not paranoid) about white people.