{"id":346,"date":"2021-03-21T23:53:13","date_gmt":"2021-03-22T03:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/?p=346"},"modified":"2021-03-22T08:21:55","modified_gmt":"2021-03-22T12:21:55","slug":"philip-larkin-on-inherited-trauma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/2021\/03\/21\/philip-larkin-on-inherited-trauma\/","title":{"rendered":"Philip Larkin On Inherited Trauma"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There is a scene in Go Tell It On the Mountain <\/em>that\u2019s bothered me since I first read it. It\u2019s extremely short\u2014you can almost miss it if you aren\u2019t paying attention. In the scene, John has just watched a film and stands on a hill, pondering the allures of sinful city life. He runs down the hill in a moment of joyous freedom, only to nearly collide with an old white man; the two \u201cstopped, astonished, and looked at one another. John struggled to catch his breath and apologize, but the old man smiled. John smiled back\u201d (EN&S 32). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s it! That\u2019s the whole scene. Now, John already enjoys a comfort among white people that his elders have never experienced; his intellect affords him his white teachers\u2019 respect. And white people have never abused him in the ways his Black father has; in fact, it is Gabriel, not any white man, who continuously antagonizes John. Why, then, should John fear the white folks, who have always been kinder than his own flesh and blood?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What John doesn\u2019t realize, of course, are all the twisted ways in which whiteness has shaped his entire family. It is whiteness that carved the racist, postbellum landscape of Gabriel\u2019s youth; which brutally violated Gabriel\u2019s first wife, Deborah; and which destroyed his firstborn son Royal. It is whiteness which drove Elizabeth\u2019s first love Richard to take his own life after he was implicated in the robbery of a white man\u2019s store, a crime he did not commit. It is whiteness that instilled in Florence the internalized racism which alienates her from the \u201cdirty\u201d and \u201ccommon\u201d lower class Black people; which moves her to try and lighten her skin; and which ultimately contributes to her separation from her husband, who feels Florence would prefer it if he\u2019d only \u201cturn white\u201d (81). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gabriel, like his wife and sister, is a product of whiteness\u2014a victim. In an extremely screwed-up way, it makes sense that, recognizing in John\u2019s intellect a sort of whiteness, Gabriel would so violently react. I\u2019ve talked a lot about inheritance laws; this <\/em>is John\u2019s allotted portion. The same Gabriel who once reflected on \u201chow sin led to sin\u201d and who has for so long borne that Great White Sin of racism now passes the fruits of his trauma onto John, projecting years of oppression onto his step-son (129). It reminds me of that Philip Larkin poem, \u201cThis Be the Verse\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another\u2019s throats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don\u2019t have any kids yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gabriel and Elizabeth and Florence have all lived their lives; they\u2019ve each experienced whiteness in all its cruelty and fallen victim to the cycle of oppression, Their fates are sealed. But John! John is young\u2014only fourteen\u2014and has his whole life ahead of him. John is the future\u2014a future that has emerged from a history of racism and violence, but which ultimately promises to break the cycle. John, at his core, is a symbol of Baldwin\u2019s hope for the next generation of Black Americans: where whiteness has marred John\u2019s entire family tree, it only smiles at him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a scene in Go Tell It On the Mountain that\u2019s bothered me since I first read it. It\u2019s extremely short\u2014you can almost miss it if you aren\u2019t paying attention. In the scene, John has just watched a film and stands on a hill, pondering the allures of sinful city life. He runs down … Continue reading Philip Larkin On Inherited Trauma<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3922,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[480788],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-go-tell-it-on-the-mountain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346","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\/3922"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":351,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions\/351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}