There is no real sense of closure in this novel. Each of the main characters (John, Gabriel, Elizabeth, and Florence) must come to an understanding of and make peace with not only each of the other characters but also themselves, including their decisions and their pasts. Although John attains salvation and a new outlook on life, he is still just embarking on his road to understanding. In the final pages, John does not suddenly become a self-actualized and content man; he is still a youth who is searching for happiness. He has just been shown the road that he must follow, and it is a long road. Elisha’s final words to John echo this truth. He says to the boy, “Run on, little brother. Don’t you get weary.”
Elisha knows from personal experience that salvation does not come in one great blinding experience, but that it is a daily struggle. John himself seems to have a glimpse of the road ahead of him as witnessed by his final words: “I’m ready. I’m coming. I’m on my way.” Perhaps he doesn’t understand the depth of his struggle, but he does realize that there is a struggle ahead of him.
Elizabeth’s future looks just as bleak as it did in the first pages of the novel. She has undergone no epiphany that has allowed her to take her life back into her own hands, and her past is still a weight that anchors her to sorrow. As the saints leave the church and begin their way home, the other women in the church misinterpret Elizabeth’s tears as those for her son and his rebirth in the church. Instead, Elizabeth weeps for her lost Richard and the happiness and love that died with him. She has undergone no change by the end of the novel. Our last glimpse of her is as she “stood in the doorway, in the long shadows of the hall.” She will never regain her pride and self-confidence, just as she will never cross the figurative threshold of Gabriel’s dominance and come into her own light. She will live forever in the shadow of Gabriel.
Gabriel is just as self-righteous as he was in the beginning, dismissing his sister’s admonishment of his hypocrisy with “I done answered already before my God. I ain’t got to answer now, in front of you.” He refuses to admit any guilt when confronted by Florence with his dead wife’s letter. He doesn’t deny that he had a child with Ester, but neither does he admit any remorse over the event. His feelings for his stepson have changed only in degree but not in kind. Gabriel still refuses to accept John and is not gladdened by John’s conversion. He continues to treat John with a mixture of repugnance and disdain. His contempt of the boy has only been heightened in reaction to John’s religious experience. He fails to accept John as holy, still insisting that it is the rebellious and angry Roy who will one day be lifted up to a place of honor in the church. Gabriel looks at John as having usurped Roy’s rightful place in the kingdom of heaven. Gabriel believes that salvation is Roy’s birthright, as he was born into a sanctified union, not John’s, as he was born out of wedlock. Instead of bringing the two of them closer, John’s experience seems to have had just the opposite effect. Gabriel is even more resentful of John than ever.
Florence sees this renewed tension in Gabriel and uses her only weapon—the letter—to protect John from his stepfather’s unholy wrath. She has carried Deborah’s letter for 30 years, never telling anyone but her husband of the damning contents. She exposes the letter now in an attempt to blackmail Gabriel on John’s behalf. She makes Gabriel, and only Gabriel, aware that she knows the truth. Florence hopes that out of fear of exposure, Gabriel will not torment her nephew with renewed animosity.
Nor is there any change in Florence’s character by the end of the novel. Florence still detests her brother and is still waiting to see him humiliated and exposed for his sins. She, however, is unlike the other characters because she doesn’t lie to herself about her life. She may have a distorted image of the past and her place in it, but she does not ignore facts. Gabriel says to her, “You ain’t never changed. You still waiting to see my downfall. You just as wicked now as you was when you was young.” Florence doesn’t deny his statement, she just elaborates on it. “No, I ain’t changed. You ain’t changed neither.” Florence is a fatalist. She not only doesn’t dispute that she has not changed; she has no expectations to do so in the future. She fully believes that with her impending death she will go to hell, but makes no effort to change her behavior.
Baldwin gives the reader no ending to the struggles of Gabriel, Elizabeth, and Florence, and for John he only gives us a new beginning. None of John’s family members have found any solutions for their disagreements or found any way to end their strife. They are all the same people, living their same lives with the same problems they had at the onset of the novel. Florence says it best when she tells Deborah, “I reckon the Lord done give them those hearts—and honey, the lord don’t give out no second helpings. …”
