March 2021 – Page 5 – James Baldwin

Fate, Dust, and Silence

Motifs of fate, dust, and silence appear to me as existing in an interconnected web of meaning within Go Tell It On The Mountain. I would like to explore these intersections, with special attention to what this might reveal of Baldwin, author of said web.

As mentioned in my last blog entry, the ceaseless dust of John’s surroundings and the point to which John is affected by this filth reveals his inescapable terror of the consequences of afterlife. John feels the need to atone for the pronounced evil of his body and identity, tasking himself with cleansing the floorboards and walls of grime in his home and in the church. This job is endless and reaps little reward. John is nearly suffocated by the dust, it “fill[s] his mouth” and threatens to “bury” him, and later, “made him cough and retch,” appearing as film around his mouth during his conversion (24, 187-188). I’m struck by the notion that the dust is so incredibly powerful that it muzzles. It invades John’s throat, his mouth, incapacitating him.

The dust transforms, however, coming to resemble the ashes of a fire. John’s throat, when filled with dust, burns as if filled with ash and becomes as “sharp as the fumes of Hell” (189). When a fire burns, ashes result. I contend that the dust that John consumes and gags on might mutate into ashes, part of the iconography of Hell. In the Old Testament of the Bible, God creates man from the dust of the ground and envisions a return to this origin: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust, you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). John is fated to this dust, yet is fighting to exist outside of this fate bequeathed to him by God and (in Baldwin’s view) is bequeathed to the American Negro. Simultaneously, John is fighting to escape the fiery Hell that he believes he is fated to. After his conversion, however, John finds reprieve. He escapes the silence symptomatic of his shame and finds a voice. Baldwin writes, “And the words came upward, it seemed, of themselves, in the new voice God had given him” (199). John is given a voice that transcends flawed human language, it comes from God himself. Baldwin may have felt a similar way when is called as a witness to the lived Black experience. This trajectory differs from the expectation of his stepfather, yet is a purpose Baldwin feels is truthful. He rejects the fate that Wright prescribes in Native Son and the fate prescribed to him by Christianity, which is “sealed forever, from the beginning of time” as a descendent of Ham (Down At The Cross 307). I’ve noticed time and time again that Baldwin is fighting to be understood for all the possibilities of his existence. He is an amalgam, a was, an am, and a will. Baldwin’s becoming is the inspiration for John’s own beginning. John is converted, yet is unfinished. As apparent in the last lines of the novel, he is still “coming” and merely “on his way” (215).

Essau and Jacob

Gabriel does not like John. He does not like that John is smart. He does not like that John is anointed. He does not like that John was born out of wedlock. We could even go further to say that Gabriel hates John. Now, many people could argue that it does not make sense that Gabriel would hate John. Gabriel beats the other children. Gabriel is mean to other people inside and outside of the house. It could be argued that Gabriel’s dislike towards John is just a part of his natural dislike towards everyone in Gabriel’s family.

However, the text shows that Gabriel is capable of showing love. When Roy is stabbed, it is said “His father muttered sweet, delirious things to Roy, and his hands, when he dipped them again in the basin and wrung the cloth out, were trembling.” (P. 40). Gabriel is capable of loving others, it is just that that love does not reach John. While it could be argued that Gabriel shows his love by clothing and feeding John, it seems more that Gabriel does these things for John because he promised Elizabeth that he would take care of John.

This makes me think about the story of Jacob and Essau. Isaac preferred Essau. Isaac would have given everything to Essau if he could have but God intervened. Essau did not follow the tenets of God. Essau did not act as a first born son should. So despite Isaac’s intentions, Jacob stole Essau’s blessings. The important word here is stole. Because it was not that Isaac changed his mind because of Essau’s faults and decided to give Jacob Essau’s blessings. Jacob pretended to be Essau to fool an old man. While Isaac did not hate Jacob, he did not want Jacob to have the birthright.

Gabriel is the same as Isaac, except with more malice towards John. While the difference in these two stories is that both Essau and Jacob were legitimate sons and John is an illegitimate son, the tale still stands. Gabriel prefers Roy to John. Yet, Roy is the son that does not follow the tenets of God. Roy is the son who does not seek to be loved by Gabriel. Roy is the son who does not act as a first born son should. While John does not seek to steal Roy’s “birthright”, his simple actions of being anointed and acting within the church makes him a better candidate. Gabriel hates that. Gabriel would rather see John lying on the couch stabbed and bleeding.

Outsider

The dynamic between stepfather and child is very interesting as people argue that many stepfathers develop the need to erase that seed from the equation. While that can explain John’s hatred from his stepfather, the nature of John’s personality is directly attributed to his mistreatment. In class, we discussed how “love” was expressed in the time this book was written and before. Love was expressed in a parent’s desire to keep their offspring alive. So the beating of good behavior into one’s child was a love language expressed by the parent. Gabriel was the apple of his mother’s eye, and although Gabriel constantly did wrong and received the belt as punishment, the bond was built he was beaten out of love and care. This is similar to Gabriel’s relationship with Roy. While he does plenty bad, Gabriel beats him constantly, but it cultivates the love he has for his child.

Even more so, Gabriel sees himself in Roy. No matter how Holy he believes he walks, he knows deep down inside that Roy represents everything that Gabriel did. And because of that, he hopes to force-feed Christianity to his son in a similar fashion that it was given to him. However, this cannot work with John. John, who is revered by everyone else in the church and whoever interacts with him, seems to be walking the path of a “Saints” son. But John’s often silence, intellect, and sexuality have allowed him to view his father and the religion he has been taught, from an outsider’s lens. John knows he’s an outsider, “He longed for a light that would teach him, forever and forever, and beyond all question, the way to gogo for a power that would bind, him forever and forever, and beyond all crying to the love of God.”(76) He hoped to belong to the religion of his stepfather, but he senses a disruption. One that allows him to see the hypocrisy in his father’s words and actions, one that causes him to shrink from the spotlight of his people, and one that forces him to question and be critical of his teachings daily. Gabriel can’t teach John the way he wants to, for John, in many cases, is already brighter than Gabriel, and he’s not about to let his heir not come from his loins.

Parental Influence

After our class discussion on how John and Gabriels’ relationship may have mirrored James and David Baldwin’s, I considered how parental relationships play a significant role in shaping who people grow up to become. Go Tell It on the Mountain encompasses many intersectional themes, including narratives on a coming of age, religious identity, sexual identity. It is evident that growing up in a racist and homophobic society outcasted Baldwin; perhaps not as evident is how the way people are raised can impact their perception and identity just as much as these other factors. We discussed how turbulent James and David Baldwin’s relationship was, noting that David Baldwin resented James and made it very clear that he wished James’s mother never had him. We often talk about how Baldwin’s racial, sexual, and religious identities ostracized him from general society, but not much about how this initial rejection from someone who was so impactful to him may have affected James Baldwin. Most of Baldwin’s work intersectionally approaches issues to observe how societal issues affect individuals. I think it is possible that neglectful, abusive parenting is a large issue at play in shaping Baldwin’s life perspective and work. Baldwin faced a lot of prejudice and oppression due to his intelligence, and identity. It is clear that those experiences affected his work; I think it is also plausible to suggest that his relationship with David Baldwin shaped James’ identity. Facing societal prejudice as a black, queer person is a painful experience that shaped Baldwin as a writer. It is helpful to understand how his personal experiences impacted his work and led him to write semi-autobiographical novels such as GTIOTM. Before Baldwin was even fully aware of all life’s burdens and troubles, he had a rough childhood. His perception of love was warped because his family displayed their love for him in manners that were sometimes violent and detrimental to him. While David Baldwin may have seen his behavior towards James doing what was necessary to get him to conform to survive as a Black man in America, I think it probably played a role in traumatizing Baldwin, thus impacting his perceptions on love, forgiveness, and relationships. I think this could be why we see those issues as recurring themes in our class so far. I submit that this parental issue is just as impactful on James Baldwin’s life and writing as the other social issues that are considered major themes in his pieces.

The Two Gabriels

Our class discussion on Wednesday made me more interested in exploring the connections between John’s father Gabriel in Go Tell It on the Mountain and the archangel Gabriel in the Bible. In one sense, both angels bring salvation to those around them. In the Bible, the archangel Gabriel tells the previously barren Elizabeth that she will have a son, who later becomes John the Baptist. Go Tell It on the Mountain Gabriel brings salvation to the life of Elizabeth by marrying her. Her boyfriend had passed away and she was left unmarried with a son. Gabriel saves her from a life as a single mother and the potential insecurity that might come along with it during that time period. This situation mirrors what Gabriel did for his first wife Deborah. She was barren and, as a result, had few prospects for marriage, but Gabriel married her when others would not.

However, there are crucial differences between these stories as well. While Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a virgin and Elizabeth was married but barren when the archangel Gabriel appeared to them, Deborah and Elizabeth in Go Tell It on the Mountain had experience with sex and pregnancy. Deborah was sexually assaulted so violently by a group of white men that she physically could not have children, and Elizabeth gave birth to a child outside of marriage without ever telling the father. None of Mary’s purity or her cousin’s desperate prayers for a child exist in Baldwin’s narrative. With these biblical parallels in mind, it is difficult to understand Gabriel the character, who we see primarily through John’s eyes. John and his father’s contentious relationship seems to contradict this connection to Gabriel the messenger of God and deliverer of good news. An answer to this uncertainty may be found in the racism that impacts Gabriel’s life and loved ones in Go Tell It on the Mountain. Baldwin’s Gabriel is not perfect like the angel but that is because he has endured immense hardship that influences how he views the world and his son John. As Dr. Kinyon posited in class, John, with his unusual personality, may remind Gabriel of white people, resulting in their rift. While the biblical Gabriel reveals much about how Baldwin’s Gabriel brought a type of salvation to his wives, other areas of connection remain unclear.

Music & Transcendence

Throughout the transition from Native Son to Go Tell It, I have been struck by the nuance that opens up a hope for redemption and union in Baldwin’s text. Both texts engage with the gritty realities of Black life in America, yet Baldwin seems intent on rediscovering some hope for transcendence. Douglas Field, in his article “PENTECOSTALISM AND ALL THAT JAZZ: TRACING JAMES BALDWIN’S RELIGION,” makes a case for this transformative vision of hope. He claims “Baldwin’s most radical rewriting of Christian—or at least spiritual identity—is to place emphasis on salvation and redemption, not through God, but through a love that is founded on the sharing of pain” (Field). Even in our readings from last week, this impulse toward radical empathy is manifest. One specific example of this could be in the woman on the screen during the movie John watches. Baldwin writes that “all of John’s sympathy was given to this violent and unhappy woman” (36). It seems that art allows John to practice a radical empathy and acceptance that his church experience denies him. This radical and nuanced empathy also provides an insight into why Baldwin incorporates so much Job imagery. Like Job in the bible, Baldwin’s text holds space for nuance, suffering, and redemption in the protest novel tradition.

After reading the Pentecostalism article, I was also particularly interested in the role music plays. Field claims that “In Baldwin’s writing transcendence or ecstasy frequently occurs outside of religious worship and is most likely to be found in the communion of friends and lovers through playing or listening to music or making love” (Field). It seems, then, that the unity of song provides an access point to transcendence. Again, Baldwin’s text seems to emphasize the important role of art. Given our discussion of Dante in class recently, I couldn’t help but think of Purgatorio. In Purgatory, art is a motive and unitive force. The songs and chants linger over the scene of striving and comfort the souls, stuck in their climb toward transcendence. This music is a shocking transition from the isolation of Dante’s hell, so the music also emphasizes a sort of participatory God, located in communion between souls. It seems perhaps that Baldwin is using music in a similar way. John shares that “their singing caused him to believe in the presence of the Lord” (12). In this way, art holds an especial chance to discover god and one another.

Everybody Plays the “Fool”

As we approach the end of Go Tell It on The Mountain, I want to think further about two disputes that Baldwin considers in the text, both which can be represented by the word “fool.” First, in his rant to Elizabeth about his father, Roy scoffs at his mother’s claim that the children are lucky to have a father like Gabriel, saying, “Yeah, we don’t know how lucky we is to have a father what don’t want you to go to movies, and don’t want you to play in the streets, and don’t want you to have no friends…We so lucky to have a father who wants us to go church and read the Bible and beller like a fool in front of the altar” (Baldwin 22). When Roy uses the word “fool,” he critiques churchgoing people who praise God energetically. Though this critique seems directed at religion, or at least Pentecostalism, generally, it is embedded in a generational dispute. Repeatedly in Go Tell It on The Mountain, children want different things for their lives than their parents do; for example, Florence rebels against her mother’s wishes and Elizabeth hides her life from her family. The relationship between the parent and child around goals for the child’s future is an interesting trope in this book and it will be interesting to see where Baldwin falls on this dispute.

However, Gabriel is not the only “fool” in the novel. Later in the text, John uses the word when he remembers that “the fool has said in his heart, There is no God” (Baldwin 77). This use of fool here refers to religion. As the saying goes, the disbeliever is foolish. Yet Roy’s earlier quote seems to assert the opposite, claiming that the believer is the foolish one. One can easily recognize fools among both religious and non-religious circles, but the central question deriving from these two uses of the word “fool” is whether Baldwin sees religion itself as foolish. Though he seemingly has a more nuanced belief about religion, his positioning on this issue is unclear at this point in the text.

“the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked”

In class we discussed at length the passage of John contemplating his sin of masturbating to older boys in the school bathroom (16). After reading Field’s piece on Baldwin and his religion, as well as trying to find connections between the bible and Baldwin’s text, I noticed another element to the scene that didn’t initially catch my attention. When John is recalling his transgression, he is waking up in his bed. On a typical morning, the house would be filled with the sounds of “his mother singing in the kitchen,” his father “muttering prayers to himself,” pots and pans, the radio, and “folk near by.” But on this day, nothing could “disturb the silence”–a theme that emerges continuously throughout the novel. In this moment, the silence is leaving him alone “with his sinful body,” making him keenly aware of his transgression. In the bible, when Adam and Eve commit the sin of eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad, they become aware that they are naked, and with this awareness comes overwhelming shame, guilt, and the need to hide from God so as to not feel exposed for what they have done and their nakedness: “…she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves” (Genesis 3:6-7). I feel as though this scene in John’s room resounds some of this imagery. His eyes were opened in a figurative sense, as designated by the silence making his awareness of his body and his sin inescapable. God could be comparable to the inescapable silence as he is omnipotent and omnipresent, and sudden awareness of Adam and Eve of their nakedness could be comparable to John’s awareness of his body.

Field describes nakedness in Go Tell It on the Mountain as “both foul and terrifying” (452). Though John was not necessarily naked in this scene, he seems bare to some extent.

I’m not sure if this connection is fully there, but this is just something I have been thinking about.

My Brother’s Keeper

I really don’t know how I could have been so surprised that a book called Go Tell It on the Mountain could contain so much religious imagery, but I was. From each character’s name to the green snake that lives on the mantle, almost everything in the novel functions as some theological double entendre. Similarly, almost everything in the novel provides autobiographical insight into James Baldwin’s own life; the allusions to his own impoverished childhood in Harlem, his religious upbringing, and his tumultuous relationship with his father are unmistakable. I thought in this week’s blog post I’d unpack an aspect of the novel which lives at the intersection between these two themes: the historical role of the oldest son in the Bible.

According to the primogeniture of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the eldest male of each family is entitled to the birthright, or a double portion of his father’s inheritance. Younger sons were each allotted only a single portion of the inheritance, while daughters were expected to marry and were thus largely excluded from inheriting anything at all (shocker, I know). Beyond this material advantage, eldest sons were expected to serve as priests–an honorable position in ancient Israel.

I’d argue that Go Tell It On the Mountain reflects this bias towards the oldest son in the characters of John and Aunt Florence. Neither John nor Florence is the eldest male: John, though older, is illegitimate, casting his trouble-making half-brother Roy as their father’s only real heir, and Florence’s younger brother Gabriel is simply a rebel. Though both John and Florence prove themselves more responsible, respectful, and generally worthy of love, it is Roy and Gabriel who are heavily favored by their respective parents. In the first two parts of the novel, it’s never explicitly stated why Gabriel so blatantly prefers Roy (though the obvious similarities between father and son almost certainly play a part), but if we are to use James Baldwin’s own life as a lens through which to analyze the text, we might surmise that the “whiteness” of John’s intellect inspires a sort of fear in his father that no amount of praying or preaching can soothe. John is thus robbed of his birthright–his father’s love–while Roy gets his own double portion, remaining, for all his faults, somehow blameless in Gabriel’s eyes. Florence’s case is much more straightforward: she might be the firstborn, but she is also a girl, and “would by and by be married, and have children of her own, and all the duties of a woman” (EN&S 68). Florence is therefore continuously overlooked, forced to watch helplessly as her mother wastes all her efforts on an ungrateful son; she is precluded from her birthright–an education, her mother’s attentions, and any hope of a future–by virtue of her gender, just as the women of the Old Testament before her.

I’d like to think that James Baldwin’s religious background would have familiarized him with this concept of primogeniture, and yet I do not doubt that it was an issue which he recognized from his own life experiences. As we discussed in class, James Baldwin was not actually the eldest child; rather, David Baldwin had a son by a previous marriage. However, James was still forced to do much of the parenting, essentially raising his younger siblings for a father who hated him. Like John, his every attempt to do right by his father was overshadowed by the simple fact that he was not David’s real son. Despite following in his father’s footsteps as a religious leader and earning a reputation for his intellectual pursuits, James received no reward for his hard work; he labored without promise of any birthright.

Hate the sin, not the sinner

The theme of racism and its effects hold my interest while reading Go Tell It on the Mountain. Baldwin examines Reconstruction era America and the lasting hold of slavery from different generations, arguing that while people are no longer actively shackled and working on a cotton field, slavery has consequences that continue to resonate in the present and has serious implications for the future.

Though the throughline of slavery started much earlier, Go Tell It on the Mountain begins with Gabriel’s mother, Rachel, who was enslaved for thirty years in the South. Rachel endured many “tribulations,” including beatings and murders, simply because they were black. She was even raped by her white master (a story we see repeated with Deborah) and was denied the child that came out of that savagery. Through the stories of the remaining characters, Baldwin shows that the abolishment of slavery didn’t mean an end to the suffering and tribulations of black people in America.

The deep-seated racism and hatred continued to plague Rachel’s descendants and is reflected deeply in Florence’s relationship with black men. Black women are doubly oppressed — they endure the oppression pf a racist and sexist society. While the racism comes from the hands of the dominant culture, the sexism also comes from black men as well. Women are considered fragile and made to depend on men and the men, hardened by a racist society, are often cruel and abusive — relieving the pressure of their experiences on women. Florence states: “ain’t no woman born that don’t get walked over by some no-count man.” Florence grows to resent black men — especially Gabriel. As he was a “manchild,” she had to sacrifice many of her desires — school, clothes, food. As a result, Florence grew to resent her brother: “I hate him!” she would yell. “Big, black, prancing tomcat of a n—-.” I found Deborah’s response to this exclamation of hatred interesting. She said, “the Word tells us to hate the sun but not the sinner.” While she may have been talking about Gabriel’s actions, I also think that she may be referring to Gabriel’s blackness as a sin. This belief of blackness as a sin reflects how deep the claws of racism are –entrenching itself into the very being of black people to cause them to also internalize it.