“Other(ed) American in Paris: Henry James, James Baldwin, and the Subversion of Identity” by Eric Savoy addresses a provocative subject matter particularly on the subject of identity. On page 338, Savoy notes, “If knowledge of self – self as implicated, situated subject, but simultaneously as ‘other’ and therefore as resisting agent – is the goal of Henry James and James Baldwin, then ‘identity’ is a dangerous word to describe that goal. Whereas Baldwin and James construct their examinations of self in terms of contraries and doubleness, ‘identity’ posits sameness: the sameness of a person at all times or in all circumstances.” In “Go Tell It on the Mountain” the topic of identity and knowing one’s self are focal points in understanding the characters of each novel. However, the analysis of the word “identity” makes one delve deeper into the appropriateness of the word in its use of defining the characters.
According to Savoy, if the understanding is that identity is found in a person’s sameness, John has none. John is an outsider in almost every environment he exists in and as a result, he cannot have a sameness or an identity with others in the novel. John, although a son and a brother, is not the same as his other siblings at home. John is not the son of Gabriel and is treated differently, but he feels the pressure to act differently than his siblings. Whether it is the difference between his baby picture and his siblings’ or the hatred he sees in his father’s eyes when he looks at him, he knows he is not the same. At church, John outwardly lives up to his father’s name and tries hard to forge an identity centered around the dedicated work of the son of a preacher. However, internally, John is far from that salvation. John struggles with seeing the light. Between the hypocrisy he sees in the teaching of the Lord versus his father’s actions or God’s role as an executioner and nothing else, John is not “at home” in the church. Although physically with his family and fellow churchgoers, John is not in unison or in sameness with them as even after he is “saved” he cannot find the spirit in his soul that he awaited to bring him closer to God one day. Finally, John could not find a home accepting of his sexuality. John’s first sin of masturbation was inspired by the thought of older boys in the bathroom. His family’s religion taught him that homosexuality was a clear sin. It was introduced and promoted as a reason for which God would strike him. This again left him with a void of identity. Savoy’s piece outlines Baldwin and James’ frustration with the American failure to recognize otherness. John’s life is a manifestation of that reality.
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I really like how you saw identity in the novel. I did my senior capstone in education on identity and students of color at PWIs. What you highlighted about identity reminded me of an aspect of my project. I used Gee’s identity theory as the groundwork of my study, and a part of that theory states that identity never exists in a vacuum. A person’s identity is co-constructed by those around them because an identity can only be such if it is acknowledged by other people. So at PWIs for example, Black students may encounter difficulties forming identities as good students if they are suffering from imposter syndrome or constantly being looked at as a student who is fulfilling a quota. I feel like this could be responsible for the “void of identity” John experiences in the novel. Because he is never the same as his counterparts, he never gets the acknowledgment that he needs to form a healthy identity, and so he becomes the neglected “other.”