This relationship is often troublesome for John because he is expected to act as a good example to his younger brother and is often reprimanded for Roy’s actions. John is held to a higher standard by his parents and everyone else in the community and is chastised for slight deviations while Roy trespasses with impunity because it is his expected behavior. For example, when neither John nor Roy know the Sunday school lessons, John’s forgetfulness “earned him the wrath of his father,” but “no one really expected of Roy what was expected of John.” Also, unless Gabriel keeps a strict eye on Roy, Roy would disappear after Sunday school and not return to morning service. He would, in fact, be gone all day. It is in this manner that Baldwin reveals to the reader John’s character. We find out who John is through direct description, and we find out who John is not through descriptions of Roy.
Baldwin further develops John’s conflicts with his father and his religion in the episode of the movie house in the city. The city acts as an unholy lure for John. On Broadway, John sees beautiful lights and magnificent towers, movie theaters, and motor cars. Here John imagines being rich and loved. It is a lure that is more attractive than the alternative: his own surroundings, the buildings, “huddled, flat, ignoble, close to the filthy ground, where the streets and the hallways, and the rooms were dark, and where the unconquerable odor was of dust, and sweat, and urine, and homemade gin.” John has “seen rich people in fancy clothes but never an angel of the lord robed in white. He has looked upon all sorts of finery in the shop windows but has never had a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven. He sees that the way of the cross had given [Gabriel] a belly filled with wind and bent his mother’s back,” but John has never seen religion make anyone happy or strong. How can one doubt that a child of barely 14 would be tempted by the broad way to shun the narrow way? The rewards which he had been promised in heaven for a good and holy life “were unimaginable—but the city was real.”
One real pleasure of the city for John is the movie houses, movie houses forbidden by Gabriel. So, ignoring Gabriel’s mandate against them, John quickly enters the theater lest he be seen by a member of his church, revealing that John, too, feels guilt about attending the movie, guilt beyond his father’s admonishments. John initially chooses this particular movie because he identifies with the young man on the advertisement. However, by the end of the film, John wants to be like the cruel woman who torments the main character. She is proud and strong and able to tell the whole world, “You can kiss my ass.” John sees these as desirable characteristics because he has constant feelings of humility and contrition. He lacks the strength to stand up against his father or his community to protect himself. John, who is forever holding back, not expressing all that he desires, wants the freedom of expression that this wicked, godless woman has. In the end, the woman dies and John imagines that her soul is transported to hell, which makes him think twice about his plans to emulate her. He believes that God led him to this movie to reinforce the teachings of his church. Thus, John’s dilemma is defined: the narrow way (the church) or the broad way (the material world).
The character with the most thematic significance is Gabriel, who has a major impact on every other character’s life. Gabriel is the product of the racist environments in which he has existed from birth. He has suffered the anxiety and confusion of the Southern, newly freed, slave environment; the anticipation and separation anxieties associated with the Great Migration; and the angst and ego-devastating environment of the Northern oppression and bigotry. In Part One, we learn that Gabriel is viewed differently by different characters.
The theme that permeates the novel and that Gabriel’s character in particular illustrates is that of racism and its various forms and consequences. Racism is evident in nearly every paragraph of the work. Every character, in large part, is the result and product of racist concepts, racist values, and racist activities. The views of John and Gabriel regarding racism are polar opposites. But John is yet a child, naïve and inexperienced; Gabriel has suffered the realities of his subordinate position in a racist society; he is embittered, hardened, and defeated. While John recalls the kindness of a concerned teacher when he was sick, Gabriel can think only of injustices that African Americans endured where he grew up and where he lives.
John is not without racist attitudes, however. John, in fact, illustrates the most tragic and insidious variety of racism, racism directed against ones own people and hence oneself. While disparaging the compliments of those of his own race, John revels in the fact that he has also been singled out for praise by whites. Baldwin writes: “John was not much interested in his people …” and “It was not only colored people who praised John, since they could not, John felt, in any case really know.” When his white school principal tells John that he is a “very bright boy,” John sees a new life opening up, but when his neighbors tell him that he will be a great leader of his people, he is unmoved.
Because John has had no overt, negative experiences with whites, “it was hard for him to think of them burning in hell forever,” as Gabriel promises they will. Gabriel proclaims whites to be wicked and untrustworthy, warning John that, when he is older, he will find out for himself how evil they really are. John has read about racism and the injustices and tortures that blacks had endured in the South, but he has experienced none of these things himself. He recalls a white teacher who brought him medicine when he was ill. He knows that there are regulations that prohibit him from living side by side with whites in the fancy apartment building that he passes, but no one has accosted him during his walk. Quite the opposite, when he ran down the hill in Central Park, he nearly knocked down an old white man. Surprised, but far from being angry, the man smiled at John, who smiled back. It was nothing but kindness and pure affection for a stranger, another human being, which passed between the two in that smile.
Oppression is always about power of some sort, and the power in Mountain appears to be heavily skewed in Gabriel’s favor. He wants it all, and, in relation to his family, he has it all. If family members disagree with him or do something he does not like, he physically attacks them. In the larger context, however, in issues relating to having dominion, sovereignty, or control over one’s life, Gabriel has been emasculated. Gabriel’s dominance of family is an illustration of a diminished and distorted standard of power. The reader learns that, at one time, Gabriel was very powerful in the community also. When he was still living in the South, his name was known far and wide, and he was considered a great man of God. He traveled widely, his name appearing on great signs that heralded his arrival. It was after he moved north and had a family to provide for that his status, and hence his power, decreased. Instead of caring for the flock’s souls, he was relegated to changing their light bulbs. It may be partially due to his loss of status in the community that Gabriel rules his family with an iron fist. Overcompensation at home does not replace his lost glory, but it helps to ease the blow.
John is also developing a sense that he, too, is powerful. When the school principal tells him that he is bright, he sees not only power but also salvation. He immediately grasps that his intelligence is power, a power, he feels, that will assist him in escaping his oppression which, at this point in his maturation, he sees as his dominant father. Someday John will be able to raise himself out of his father’s world, which he does not want for himself. It is John’s conflict with his father that feeds his intellect. Although John sees himself as having a heart full of sin for rejecting his father’s life, he understands that his head will lead him to a different life.
A common literary device used by Baldwin in this section is that of foreshadowing, which predicts something in the future that the character (and sometimes the reader) knows nothing about. Perhaps the line most full of foreshadowing because it calls upon two separate events is spoken by Elizabeth. During her argument with Roy, she warns him against his headstrong ways, saying that it appears that he won’t stop “till someone puts a knife in you.” Later that same day, someone does indeed put a knife into Roy. Elizabeth’s line also conjures up another event. Royal, Gabriel’s unclaimed son, died from a stab wound he received over a game of cards.
The actual stabbing of Roy again calls to mind Royal’s death. Elizabeth inadvertently calls up Royal’s death when she suggests to Gabriel that they pray to God to stop Roy before he receives a mortal wound. Her unwitting reminder to Gabriel of his first son earns her a blow that knocks her to the floor. Despite the fact that Roy’s wound is to his forehead, Gabriel says that his attackers were trying to cut his throat. Again, it was Royal whose wound was to the throat. That Royal’s death is referenced four separate times in such a short period suggests its significance.
