Go Tell It on the Mountain

There are live wires when dealing with any political (or politicized) topic in art.  When discussing race, religion, and sex, an author runs the risk of oversimplifying the issue, of sacrificing honesty to present the topic in a falsely positive or negative light.  Moreover, when two of these topics appear in the same work, one may be sacrificed to the other.  For example, Ralph Ellison is interested in race and power in Invisible Man, and he has little to no interest in how gender plays into that mix.  As a result, the female characters make fleeting appearances at best and generally fall flat, skipped over for the Ellison's larger interest.  Any one of these topics, then, is difficult to handle honestly, and with each added topic in the same work, the difficulty increases exponentially.

James Baldwin pulls off the amazing feat of handling not one, not two, but all three issues of race, religion, and sex without sacrificing any issue to the other two, all the while being honest about all three.  The result is an incredibly insightful representation of the lives of African Americans in the mid-20th century.


Go Tell It on the Mountain is the story of John Grimes.  It is a coming of age story as John travels from boyhood to manhood all in the course of the day of his 14th birthday.  In the first chapter, we meet all the major players of the novel: John, his brother Roy, his father Gabriel, his mother Elizabeth, his aunt Florence, and a young man at the church whom John greatly admires, Elisha.  We learn that Gabriel is not John's birth father, but that he has helped raise John since John was a baby.  We learn that John is a quiet boy whose heart is filled with anger towards his father, who is a deacon at their church and a strict disciplinarian.  We learn that Gabriel does not seem to like John, preferring his natural son Roy (short for Royal), though Roy has as much contempt for his father as John does.  In the final section, while at a church prayer service that night, John finds himself on the threshing floor having the religious experience that brings him into adulthood in the eyes of the church. But it is the middle section that colors our understanding of and hopes for John, for it is in the middle section that we learn the histories of Florence, Gabriel, and Elizabeth.  These stories are like overlapping short stories, and they provide the context for John's climactic experience.




In another novel, John's rising up from the threshing room floor would mark a moment of transition symbolizing a great rebirth.  But in Baldwin's hands, John's entrance into adulthood and religious revelation are not simple moments to be celebrated.  Nor are they defeats for John.  They are complicated experiences, and we are all too aware of the complexities.  When John goes home after the service, we do not expect his life to change.  We are all too aware of the rough road ahead.


One of the things I admire about this book is how it has a cumulative effect, like when your eyes adjust to a darkened room:  you find certain objects and lights immediately, and then bring more and more into view as you understand the objects you see and search to make sense of the shapes that are only just coming into view.  The first thing you see in this book is religion.  Every character in the novel struggles with the Christian faith and the Baptist church.  For every character, the religion provides both moments of anguish and moments of peace.  Baldwin sees the church as a powerful force, as destructive as it is positive, and for his black community, it is the center of power.  Gabriel himself is powerful, physically and spiritually.  But that show of power is coupled with the powerlessness of his actions--Gabriel cannot control his son, couldn't save his first son Roy, couldn't lift Deborah up as he imagined, and can't stop John from having his revelation.  This powerlessness masking itself as power is echoed by the presence of White America in the novel.  In both the South and the North, Baldwin's focus is on African American communities, but on the outskirts of those communities are the violent actions of whites:  Deborah's rape, Richard's brutalizing, Roy's stabbing.  These events are never the focus, but their pressure is felt in every thing else that happens.  Baldwin captures all this seamlessly, and it's only in actively thinking about the stories of the various characters and where their lives meet that the connections start revealing themselves.


I was most struck by Baldwin's depiction of his female characters, Florence, Elizabeth (and even Esther and Deborah).  They are every bit as complex as the men, and they are crucial to Baldwin's complete depiction of the black community he is discussing.  These women are not cowed by the threats thrown at them in the guise of religious guidance.  They are strong and insecure and looking for something they can't find.  You feel for everyone, even when you don't like them.  The book is, in short, a perfect study in character.

This is the first Baldwin novel I have ever read.  I have read and loved many essays and always respected him as a thinker and as a writer with the ability to get at the heart of things in a poetic and profound manner.  His novel writing is every bit as impressive, and I look forward to reading more of his novels when this project has come to its completion.