The biblical Deborah, the name in the novel of Gabriel’s first wife, is a prophet and the only female Judge in the Bible who, with exemplary faith and courage, assisted in defeating the Canaanites and saving Israel, circa 1200 b.c. Elisha, whose name means “God is salvation,” was a miracle worker of the Old Testament and, therefore, preceded Jesus. Although he was available to all social strata, Elisha ministered mainly among the common and poor people. He was very sensitive to the needs of the suffering and performed miracles to alleviate their pain. The novel’s Elisha is much like his namesake. While he does not raise the dead or multiply food, he is still very close to his Lord and often overcome by spiritual ecstasy, falling down and speaking in tongues. He preaches salvation to the young John and acts as his friend while the boy is going through a difficult period in his life. He lessens John’s mental anguish and the pain of his solitude.
Finally, the scriptural tone and syntax of the language Baldwin uses throughout the novel demonstrates biblical influence in the everyday lives and language of the community.
In the short, opening paragraph of the novel, Baldwin introduces several conflicts and issues in the life of one of the central characters of the novel, John Grimes. These various issues include John’s conflict with religion in general and the ministry specifically (as evidenced in the narrator’s observations that “Everyone had always said he would be a preacher just like his father …;” “John, without ever really thinking about, had come to believe it;” and by the age of 14, “… it was already too late” to change this fate); the conflict between John and his father; the conflict with his society (as represented by the “everyones” in this paragraph and their collective expectation that he would become a preacher); and the conflicts associated with pubescence (he is just turning 14).
But more significantly, a few pages later, the careful reader is already sensing that there is another—perhaps, more serious—conflict present: Something is wrong in this community of individuals who demonstrate or articulate personal feelings of frustration, of helplessness, and of dissatisfaction because of their inability to control or to have significant influence over their lives and circumstances—a far cry from having dominion over all other things. In addition, there is much more here than the typical conflicts faced by just any young male facing manhood, even one who is also wrestling with his religious identity and beliefs.
Through John, his family, and his environment, Baldwin exposes the social and psychological devolution of a people who have suffered and continue to suffer the insidious affects of racism from which there appears to be no escape, save death. The characters in the novel are only slightly removed (a generation or two) from their slave ancestors. We learn, for example, in Part Two, that Gabriel and Florence’s mother was a slave, freed only by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War. The novel takes place in 1935, only 73 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation (1862) and 70 years after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant (April, 1865), ending the American Civil War, and the ratification of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery (December, 1865).
As a result of this proximity to slavery, the characters of the novel suffer a special set of physical, psychological, and social circumstances: As we learn later, Gabriel and Florence, for example, have siblings they will never know because, as property, their siblings were taken from their mother for various reasons (but all having to do with their slave—therefore, race—status and circumstances); the Great Migration (the journey north for many southern blacks) originally held promise of better times and circumstances for each character but ultimately resulted in only a different, often more oppressive, manifestation of the racism they were attempting to escape.
These outcomes and consequences of the American slave era and other vestiges of this period constitute the racism that Baldwin depicts in Go Tell It on the Mountain: It is second and third generation, slave-psyche racism, a racism based on the notion that one group of people is socially, genetically, and intentionally superior to another. This form of racism works its evil and malice on both the perpetrator and the victim.
Our very nature and culture cause us to defend what we do as morally right or definitely not wrong or, at least, morally neutral. Here and there, evil individuals may deliberately do evil things, but most of us feel a need to convince ourselves—and, most often, others—that what we do is, at least, not wrong. Therefore, we construct a rationale that justifies our actions. And so it was with the justification of slavery and racial categorizing. In subsequent generations, these rationales are accepted as moral or ethical truths. Hence, at some point, one or both populations may generally believe and endorse religious fabrications, such as the African-American blackness being the mark of Ham (Genesis IX, 25); distorted cultural values, such as lighter skin tones are “better” than darker skin tones; diminished expectations or standards of success and satisfaction, such as, a “storefront church” or merely “putting food on the table” or “clothes on the back” as being sufficient; or they may resort to opiates for escape, such as drinking and exaggerated adherence to religion and religious activity.
Baldwin demonstrates this affect of racism in each of his major characters, but in the two main characters, John and Gabriel—father and son—most vividly. John is the central character in the story’s main plot (the maturation of a boy physically and religiously) while Gabriel figures most prominently in its major theme (the tragic effects of racism on a people and a society). Each character is the product of his environment, and each reflects the debilitating nature and consequences of the racism in his environment.
The plot of the story concentrates on the man-child, John, who is just turning 14 and wrestling both with the natural biological transformation that is taking place within him and with his confused social and religious status. John sees himself connected to evil. In part, he feels this because Gabriel, the second most significant character in the plot, has told him seriously and often that he is ugly and that the face of Satan can be seen in his features. But John also feels this way, in part, because he is reacting as a normal young male reacts who, during puberty, is confused by the irresistible urges of his new sexuality juxtaposed to the social, religious, and parental proscriptions against them.
Baldwin emphasizes John’s sexual-moral conflict in the incident on the morning of his birthday. While looking at a stain on the ceiling which in John’s mind has begun to resemble a naked woman, his thoughts turn to his “sin” of masturbating in the restroom of his school while thinking of the older boys who competed to see “whose urine could arch higher” and he “had watched in himself a transformation of which he could never speak.” Although these feelings and, in fact, these episodes fall well within what is normal for the pubescent male, John is not aware of that, and he believes that he is evil, that his “heart was hardened against the Lord.”
We learn a good deal about John in this first part through the literary device of character foil. The reader is informed of the differences between John and his younger brother, Roy: John is the good son, and Roy has a reputation as the typical bad seed. Whereas John is expected to become a minister, Roy looks as if he is headed for damnation. Roy is unabashed and boastful about his sexual conquests involving some of the girls in the neighborhood, and he frequently watches the prostitutes in the basement of a condemned house, which John avoids doing. John’s virtues are reflected by Roy’s apparent vices.
