{"id":290,"date":"2021-03-17T14:16:49","date_gmt":"2021-03-17T18:16:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/?p=290"},"modified":"2021-03-18T12:30:17","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T16:30:17","slug":"fate-dust-and-silence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/2021\/03\/17\/fate-dust-and-silence\/","title":{"rendered":"Fate, Dust, and Silence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

As mentioned in my last blog entry, the ceaseless dust of John\u2019s 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 \u201cfill[s] his mouth\u201d and threatens to \u201cbury\u201d him, and later, \u201cmade him cough and retch,\u201d appearing as film around his mouth during his conversion (24, 187-188). I\u2019m struck by the notion that the dust is so incredibly powerful that it muzzles. It invades John\u2019s throat, his mouth, incapacitating him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dust transforms, however, coming to resemble the ashes of a fire. John\u2019s throat, when filled with dust, burns as if filled with ash and becomes as \u201csharp as the fumes of Hell\u201d (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: \u201cBy 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\u201d (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\u2019s 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, \u201cAnd the words came upward, it seemed, of themselves, in the new voice God had given him\u201d (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<\/em> and the fate prescribed to him by Christianity, which is \u201csealed forever, from the beginning of time\u201d as a descendent of Ham (Down At The Cross 307). I\u2019ve 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<\/em>, an am<\/em>, and a will<\/em>. Baldwin\u2019s becoming is the inspiration for John\u2019s own beginning. John is converted, yet is unfinished. As apparent in the last lines of the novel, he is still \u201ccoming\u201d and merely \u201con his way\u201d (215).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading Fate, Dust, and Silence<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3904,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[480788],"tags":[144506,483718,41616,484039],"class_list":["post-290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-go-tell-it-on-the-mountain","tag-becoming","tag-biblical-interpretation","tag-fate","tag-hell-fire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3904"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":293,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions\/293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}