The novel begins in New York City on the 14th birthday of the central character in the plot, John Grimes. The reader is told immediately that the people in John’s life all expect him to become a preacher when he comes of age, just as his father did. John’s memories reveal bittersweet Sunday mornings as the Grimes family prepares for church services that are held in a store front church called “The Temple of the Fire Baptized,” which is just a few blocks up the street.
Despite expectations for John’s future in the ministry, he is not the best Sunday school student. He often becomes distracted, forgets his lessons, and is reprimanded by his Sunday school teacher, Elisha, an older boy of 17 whom John greatly admires. While John’s lapses bring him the anger of his father, his brother Roy’s utter disinterest is generally expected, and “[e]veryone was always praying that the Lord would change Roy’s heart.” John is expected to be a good example to his younger brother.
Although church services at first appear to be very free, emotional, and spontaneous, there are strict standards and expectations that must not be violated. One Sunday, Father James calls Elisha and Ella Mae before the congregation and reprimands them for the time that they have been spending together, warning them against “the sin he knew they had not committed yet,” “a sin beyond all forgiveness.”
The first of his family or his neighbors to wake that Saturday morning, John is greeted by a silent house. He feels an immediate sense of foreboding and recalls that he has sinned. His thoughts jump to wondering if his birthday will again go unremembered and uncelebrated.
John falls back asleep with his thoughts and awakens again after his father, Gabriel, has left for work. He goes to the kitchen to join his family and sees, as though for the first time, what the room really looks like: immured in dirt and poverty. His entrance interrupts an argument his mother and Roy, his brother, are having, and he is intensely disappointed to see that no special breakfast has been prepared to celebrate his birthday. The argument, about Gabriel and what kind of father and man he is, continues, and we see that it is one that Roy and Elizabeth have had before. Elizabeth defends her husband on the grounds that he is a good provider, while Roy derides him for beating his children. Despite the serious subject, the argument ends on a light note, and Elizabeth sends her sons off to do their weekly cleaning chores.
John’s duty is to clean the front room, mainly to sweep the decaying rug in the front parlor—a Sisyphean task that John detests, because all his labor brings such a small reward and no personal satisfaction of accomplishment for him. The rug is perpetually dirty. When he has finished with the rug, John starts wiping dust from the mirror. In the midst of cleaning, he sees his own face and is shocked to see that he has not changed. He tries to see himself as his father does. He tries to find the features of the devil on his own face, those that his father has told him time and time again are there.
Giving up on trying to discover himself in his features, John reviews the family’s possessions on the mantel. A malevolent green metal serpent sits in the midst of family photos and greeting cards. A photo of his father taken long ago in the South where Gabriel and his sister grew up reminds John that this is not his father’s first marriage and makes him realize that, if Gabriel’s first wife had lived, it would have negated John’s entire existence. John wishes that he could ask this long dead woman, whom he believes Gabriel had loved, how he, John, could win his father’s love.
John is called to the kitchen where his mother is doing laundry. To his surprise, she gives him money so that he can buy himself something for his birthday. He chooses to go to the movies, an activity forbidden by his father and, upon returning home, is told that his brother has been stabbed.
Although there is a great deal of blood, it is immediately obvious that Roy is in no mortal danger. While tender with Roy, Gabriel lashes out at Elizabeth verbally and then physically. After Roy calls his father a “black bastard” for slapping his mother, Gabriel removes his belt and beats Roy until Florence, the boys’ aunt and Gabriel’s sister, stops him.
John opens the church to clean before Saturday night Tarry Service and is shortly joined by Elisha, John’s friend and youth minister, who has come to help him. The two argue playfully and then wrestle, a match that, for the first time, ends in a draw. Elisha speaks to John about salvation and foregoing earthly pleasures for the promise of Heaven. John is warned against sin and is urged to ask for the help of Jesus to overcome the devil. Soon other members of the congregation begin to arrive. John sees his parents and aunt walk in. He is shocked because he has never seen Florence in that church before and wonders what other strange happenings the night will bring.
