Category: Go Tell It On The Mountain

When the Saints Go Marching In

Throughout the duration of my reading of Baldwin’s Go Tell it On The Mountain, I have been interested in how the narrative bases itself on James Baldwin’s autobiography, while also interacting Biblical symbolism in order to create a criticism of the Christian religion. I’ve been particularly in the themes of apocalypticism that run through the narratives of each major character in the text. Though the main characters (John, Elisha, Gabriel, Elizabeth, Deborah, etc.) are all seeking to grow in their faith in God, it seems as though their greatest motivation for being “saved” is just to avoid the eternal damnation they feel destined for. They do not show nearly as much interest in being with God in the afterlife as they do in fleeing Hell. This is shown through the “fire and brimstone” rhetoric that pervades the thoughts words of each character in John’s family. Shame seems to be the main motivating factor for this outlook on religion and faith.

            As this piece is based in Baldwin’s autobiography, I feel that Baldwin is making a criticism of the culture of the [Black] church, in its exploitation of human shame. We can see this through John’s redemption at the end of the text. Although John bears doubts about his religion and even hates religion because of its association with his father, he still seeks out peace in religious redemption. When John is saved and has his name written the Book of Life at the end of the narrative, he feels a sense of peace, or perhaps relief. He no longer feels that he has to run from Hell; no matter how much of a sinner he feels he is, he has escaped Hell. He gets to be in “that number” when the saints come marching into the pearly gates, but it may not be until the afterlife that he gets to fully accept and love himself.

            Still, John has doubts at the end of the work, the fear of damnation somehow still finding him taking over. He says to Elisha, “No matter what happens to me, where I go, what folks say about me, no matter what anybody says, you remember—please remember—I was saved. I was there.” (Baldwin 215). He cannot fully revel in the miracle of his salvation; he is too fearful that it might be taken away from him.

Florence is perhaps the only character who is not willing to compromise her true self for her the eternal life of her soul. We can see this through how she talks with her brother Gabriel on matters of “the heart”. She is well aware that Gabriel is a well-revered man in the church and seen as very faithful man of God, but she does not believe that intention alone will get Gabriel to march with the saints into heaven. This is why Gabriel hates Florence; he sees her as a threat to his own salvation.

Go Tell it on the Mountain tells the story of a collection of characters who find solace in religion not necessarily because they want to march with the saints into heaven’s gates, but because they want to escape the Hell that they feel their sin and shame promises them. It’s fascinating to see Baldwin’s criticism of religion jump out through these characters!

An Alternative Creation Account

Part One of Go Tell It on the Mountain is titled “The Seventh Day.” As we discussed in class, there is a lot of imagery of renewal and rebirth–Pentecost, spring, John’s 14th birthday. In Genesis, God rested on the seventh day. He had just finished his creation, making humankind in his image and likeness and granting them “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth” (Genesis 1:26), and he saw that his creation was good. The novel, however, does not give us the same imagery. Instead, the imagery of dust, dirt, and filth recur throughout the novel. During John’s Saturday morning chores he would become overwhelmed by dust–”each dustpan he so laboriously filled at the doorsill demons added to the rug twenty more” (24). John and his family’s world does not feel as the same beautiful and good one God created and granted humankind. Additionally, the characters in the novel seem to have little to no control, or dominion, over their own lives and choices. Gabriel, John, Elizabeth, and Florence are unable to see that something better may lie ahead of them–unable to ‘see a way out of the desert.’ 

At the end of the novel, John is saved. As we discussed in class, he has become a prophet of sorts, just as Baldwin felt that he was for Black America. When they leave the temple, they emerge onto the “filthy streets [ringing] with the early-morning light” (202). The streets are still filthy, but they are ringing in the light. Light is an image of hope and goodness–a goodness that we see in the creation account but that John’s world has been lacking. John is becoming prepared to deliver his people from this filth. In a way, John feels like the light–there to give his people the dominion they never received. Perhaps this is like a sort of exposé on those that the creation account neglected. Perhaps the seventh day here is of a new creation story for Black America–one where they will receive their dominion, volition, and goodness so that they too can rest (Genesis 2).

Genesis, Creation, and Baldwin

The only thing that I ever managed to retain from my mandatory Theology class at Notre Dame, is, somehow, Genesis I. I do not know why this is what I remember after four months of learning about the Bible, but on further thought, I feel it is the most universal thing in the Bible that I could relate to. The idea of creation is something each individual belonging to any religion has pondered upon at some point. As human beings, we are created by our parents. Each religion talks about a different God or power that created the Earth and all its wonders. Even an atheist has a scientific or another theory of how the world he or she has come to live in was created. It is because of this universality of the idea of creation that Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountainis relatable. I found John’s story in Go Tell It on the Mountainvery similar to Genesis I. Genesis I states that 

“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And, God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.” (Genesis 1:1) 

John’s tale is of the creation or the building of his faith. Earlier, he had a void which contained information about faith, given to him by his father. Later, he processes that information and realizes he must discover the reality of faith himself. The darkness of his father’s thoughts and behavior covered John’s life. However, A wind, or understanding of God, swept over him, towards the end of the book, which illuminated his mind and freed him from his darkness. The darkness was no longer a concern since he had been enlightened about faith. John says that “no matter what happens to me, where I go, what folks say about me, no matter what anybody says, you remember—please remember—I was saved. I was there.” (Baldwin 356) In this moment, John is has a wind that sweeps his dark thoughts away and he is illuminated about God and saved from making the darkness in his life his main concern.   

The Quest For Love

In Go Tell It on the Mountain, Baldwin sees the possibility of love both within the theological as well as a physical aspect. Love is something that John Grimes struggles to find throughout the novel and I’ve been wrestling with this question — besides his mother, where does he get that love?

Love should have come from Gabriel, John’s step-father and God’s messenger (going off his namesake), but it didn’t. Rather, John receives the minimum and only that — he is fed. clothed, sent to school but he doesn’t receive the love and emotional care that is necessary for one’s growth. What Gabriel presents is a message of sinfulness and eternal punishment in the burning fires of hell. To be saved from the wrath of this fearful God that Gabriel preaches about, one needs to be humble and leave behind all earthly things. Gabriel’s God is not one of love and compassion — may be because Gabriel is projecting himself into the theology. Gabriel projects a lot of hate, fear, and guilt into his theology and it’s impossible to have a loving relationship to arise from such a cancerous atmosphere and heart posture. God, after all, is about love, acceptance, and compassion. One notable point as well is that loving God and one’s neighbor in a Christian point of view requires the relinquishment of the self and power — Gabriel (and John) refuses to give up that power — rather, he is attracted to the pulpit partly because of the power and importance that it would bring him — “he wanted to be master, to speak with that authority which could only come from God.” As a father, husband, and brother, Gabriel’s legacy is one of fear and hatred rather than love.

But there is a bit of hope for the redemptive powers of Love in Go Tell It. I believe that there was real love between Richard and Elizabeth. The cruelty, however, lies in the outside world (the white world), unable to hold love for black people, taking away Richard from Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s relationship with Richard shows that there is a possibility of love but that it lies outside the “normal” and expected avenues. I see this through Elizabeth and Richard because despite the fact that Richard wasn’t “saved,” he and Elizabeth thrived and were happy in the world they created. Whereas, when Elizabeth interacted with those within the church (speaking of men), she got nothing but heartache.

The strongest possibility of love lies in the relationship between John and Elisha. However, that relationship is tense and deals with a kind of sexualized spirituality. This is not yet a fully formed thought and I’m still formulating it — I will continue expanding upon this during our presentation this week.

Gabriel Seeing His Own Face in the Glass

In the preface of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde writes, “The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.” When I first read Wilde’s book and encountered these lines, I interpreted them in the context of Wilde’s time and never considered how they may apply to a work like Go Tell It on the Mountain until Dr. Kinyon asked us to contemplate them in class. I then realized that these lines explain the relationship between Gabriel and John. 

Gabriel is confused by his strange, intelligent son who reminds him of the white people he hates so much. As a result, Gabriel seems to hate John and treats him with anger. Gabriel’s reaction to John is the “rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.” Gabriel wants John to be like him, but instead, Gabriel sees in his son traits that he associates with whiteness. Like Caliban in this quote, Gabriel is upset to see the unexpected and lashes out. 

At the end of the novel, John undergoes his conversion, and thus becomes more like his father, a dutifully religious man. However, Gabriel does not respond to this conversion as you might expect, with pride, joy, and love. Rather, when John turns to face his father smiling, Gabriel does not smile back. Gabriel only thinks of being saved from his own sin. In this way, Gabriel demonstrates the “rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.” Finally, John is acting like his father and embracing the Church, but his dad remains unhappy. He is too consumed by the letter his sister Florence shows him. Gabriel refuses to accept what he sees in the glass, because it reveals the truth about himself and the child he fathered by cheating on Deborah. Whether it is dismay at seeing what he does not wish to see or distress upon seeing who he really is, Gabriel exemplifies Caliban as he looks into the glass. 

Gabriel’s Hypocrisy

In Part Two of Go Tell It on the Mountain, Gabriel’s point-of-view narrative irrefutably demonstrates just how misogynistic he is by making clear the double standards he has regarding how he views himself and how he views women. When he finds out that Esther is pregnant with his child, he is shocked and appalled that she should be the one worthy enough to carry his heir. Baldwin writes from Gabriel’s perspective, “She was going to have his baby – his baby? While Deborah, despite their groaning, despite the humility with which she endured his body, yet failed to be quickened by any coming life. It was in the womb of Esther, who was no better than a harlot, that the seed of the prophet would be nourished” (124). At this point, the reader has already seen how Gabriel thinks very highly of himself while continually judging and denigrating everyone else. However, the harsh language he uses to describe Esther in referring to her as “no better than a harlot” is especially hypocritical. She is not the only one who has acted in order to create this child, and she is not the one in this relationship who is cheating on a spouse by pursuing it. We see Gabriel’s misogyny and hypocrisy a little further on in this section when he comments on “how far his people had wandered from God;” he reflects, “Women, some of whom should have been at home, teaching their grandchildren how to pray, stood, night after night, twisting their bodies into lewd hallelujahs in smoke-filled, gin-heavy dance halls, singing for their ‘loving man.’ And their loving man was any man, any morning, noon, or night – when one left town they got another…” (131). It is not his place to condemn these women and tell them what they should and should not be doing when he, as a preacher, definitely should not be engaging in many of his similarly sinful behaviors. He is no better than them, and his willingness to believe that he will be forgiven for all of his transgressions but that they are irredeemable is extremely hypocritical. This double standard solidifies in my mind how utterly reprehensible and undeserving of grace Gabriel is.

The Shame of a Father and the Curse of Slavery

In Go Tell it on the Mountain, Baldwin includes the biblical allusion Noah cursing Ham’s descendants into a life a servitude. In the King James version, the story goes that Noah slept drunk and uncovered in a tent, and “Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without” (Gen 9: 22). This resulted in Noah waking up and disowning his son that Baldwin describes: “Ah, that son of Noah’s had been cursed, down to the present groaning generation: A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren” (191). This story became the foundational text for justifying slavery on biblical grounds as historians racialized Ham as Black and his descendants were deemed to be Africans. This story returns to our initial question of what it means to be Black and explores the origins of the concept of race. Ham’s racialization as a Black figure links a divine proclamation of ancestral slavery to the present-day racial hierarchy.

Baldwin connects the biblical story to John seeing his father exposed. “Sometimes leaning over the cracked, ‘tattle-tale’ gray bathtub, he scrubbed his father’s back; and looked, as the accursed son of Noah had looked, in his father’s hideous nakedness.” John saw his father naked and connected an intimate moment of family privacy with the sin of indecent sexuality. This shows how Black men are sexualized and are held to a high standard of acting honorably within the family. John is held to a high, almost impossible moral standard by his father, but is still punished for viewing the shame of his father. The vagueness of the sin of John seeing his father naked connects to the lack of clarity in the Bible on what transgression Ham is committing. Many interpretations view Ham as a sexual offender and voyeur while others think he castrated his father or had relations with his mother while Noah was drunk. Regardless, Ham’s transgression was a crime against family honor and slavery was the proper punishment of life without honor. These biblical interpretations serve as a projection of white sexual fear and codes of honor. Baldwin sees himself and other Black men suffering from the legacy of the curse saying, “How could John be cursed for having seen in a bathtub what another man—if that other man had ever lived—had seen ten thousand years ago, lying in an open tent?” This also builds John’s shame in his sexuality towards men if he cannot even view his naked father without being reminded of the curse of Ham.

Suffering Servant

The essentially autobiographical “Go Tell it on the Mountain” allows the reader to examine and relate to the true thoughts and emotions that shaped Baldwin. Several elements draw distinct comparisons between James and Jesus the Messiah. To start, the book itself begins with the protagonist’s birthday. Although it isn’t his actual day of birth, his 14th birthday symbolizes his start of puberty and the beginning of his consciousness, manhood, and realization of who he is. This is very similar to the beginnings of two gospel stories in the Holy Bible that describe Christ’s nativity and “birth”. Furthermore, both Jesus and the protagonist are assisted by a “Gabriel”. In Jesus’ case, the angel Gabriel came down to tell Mary, Jesus’ mother, that she would have a divine child. He delivered the news that out of her virginity, she would give birth to a child of the Lord. In class, we studied a marble statue that interpreted the concept of Gabriel’s delivery of the message that Mary would be impregnated with the seed of God. Gabriel was the messenger that predicted Jesus. In “Go Tell it on the Mountain,” Gabriel is portrayed as a stepfather, and while his seed did not produce the protagonist, his urging of John to embrace Christianity and get saved, allowed John to become the person he would be. John’s desire to please his family and follow in the ways of God truly shapes his thoughts and motivations. However, because he never truly feels the spirit that he anticipates coming when giving oneself to God, he views Christianity from a removed, third-person view. This enables him to recognize and speak about the hypocrisies. James Baldwin uses this knowledge and vantage to apply to his analysis of Black Americans. Additionally, in the biography of James Baldwin that was studied in class, it was only because James had been “saved” that his stepfather allowed him to stay in high school and cultivate his academic prowess. Without his education, he would not have the tools necessary for success. Lastly, both Jesus and Baldwin suffered for their beliefs and for the salvation of others. The Christian understanding is that Jesus suffered for our sins. The suffering element is important as humility is found in the time spent suffering. While Christ had to suffer, he did so to testify for humanity’s sins and to save them. Throughout the story, it is clear that John is suffering. Whether it is his sexuality, the sin of his masturbation, his treatment from his father, his outward appearance, Christianity in general, and his ideas of white people, John is constantly in turmoil. But “John” endures this in order to be able to testify for his people. Without the struggle and experiences of his childhood, he would not have been prepared to speak with credibility about the lives of Black people in his adulthood. His road destined him for service to others.

Divine Covenant

In Christianity, the principle of living out your faith and practicing the tenets of religion in one’s daily life is highly emphasized. Even in my theology courses at ND, I have learned about the divine covenant – or the promise God made to the ancient Israelites and all of humanity to protect them as long as they kept His law and were faithful to him. This promise is a condition and relies on the premise that people remain in line with Scripture and God’s teachings to receive his salvation and grace. According to many passages of the Bible, one must carry out one religion successfully to guarantee salvation. Matthew 7:24-27 says:

“Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” ~ Matthew 7:24-27

 One can interpret this to meant that if one does not “live out their faith” and put the principles of their faith in practice, they are foolish and are thought not to be guaranteed salvation. The scene in Go Tell it on The Mountain that depicts John’s hallucination and interaction with Gabriel exemplifies the importance of living out one’s faith in Christianity. Also, it may allude to Baldwin’s struggles with the divine covenant. 

When John sees his father in his hallucination, Gabriel did not show him any affection and did not respond to John’s profession of being saved. Baldwin writes, “He did not move to touch him, did not kiss him, did not smile,” and that Gabriel was non-responsive to John’s initial profession of salvation. Gabriel then goes on to only say, “‘It comes from your mouth… I want to see you live it. It’s more than a notion.” This articulation of wanting to see John’s faith in the way he lived goes back to the divine covenant agreement of living out your faith, and its inclusion in this passage displays how important a tenet this is in Christianity. Baldwin writes that John preceded to weep upon his father’s response, which I think represents the struggle Baldwin had with the pressure he felt to live out his faith. James Baldwin spent his whole life thinking he was a sinner because of his sexuality. As a result, he may have constantly struggled with the idea that he would never be able “to live his faith” or gain salvation (as his dad demanded of him in his hallucination). Throughout GTIOTM, John struggles to maintain his faith because he feels like a sinner and a disappointment. I think this speaks to the larger narrative in Baldwin’s life of the constant feeling of being an outsider and not being able to find a home in his family, or faith. A perspective that is reflected in his work.

The Absence of Love

During one of our classes, Professor Mouton-Kinyon had brought up the theme of love, or the absence of it, in John’s relationship with his Mother and Father. The absence of love for the child is shown in John’s family, but also in the history recounted by Florence’s mother who had her children taken away from her during slavery. In the Bible, it is written that God is Love, and so for the people in this story, bringing their children to God is, one can argue, loving them or giving them all the love they need. But, before a child can be brought into this world, there are parental relationships that occur first. I am interested in the absence of love in the romantic relationships in the novel, and how these relationships never were allowed to blossom into love because, 1. they occurred outside of the “rules” of their religion or 2. they were using religion as a safety net. 

For example, Elizabeth was never able to love Richard because of his death, but he also was a man who cursed the Lord and religion. Florence, who never connected to religion or the Lord, never understood her husband or really loved herself until she felt that it was almost her time to die. But still she could not find love for her own brother, because in the end she still wanted to show him his hypocritical ways and she seems to say I have come to terms with my faults and lack of love for the Lord, but you have not and it continues to spew hatred not love on those around you. And Gabriel displays this absence of love the most. Gabriel talks about how he hated Deborah after he began to have an affair with Esther, but he has never loved a woman in his life really and I would argue is incapable of love because he has hatred in his heart and the shame he feels that seems to overpower all of his other emotions. He also uses his marriage to Elizabeth as a safety net because he believes she repented to the Lord and is a Godly woman. Using scripture, 1 John 2: 7-11 states: “Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.” I think this describes Gabriel directly because he and Elizabeth cannot provide the love their children need, when they have never experienced it themselves, and refuse to acknowledge that.