654 The American Century: Literature since 1945reflect a religious influence. However, in 1944 he moved to Greenwich Village, then
began to shuffle off his church associations and to work on a novel, provisionally
titled “Crying Holy” and then “In My Father’s House.” It was published in 1953 as
Go Tell It on the Mountain; it immediately established Baldwin’s reputation and it is
probably his most accomplished novel.
Essentially, Go Tell It on the Mountain is an initiation novel. Its protagonist,
John Grimes, whom we first meet on “the morning of his fourteenth birthday,” is
modeled in part on the young James Baldwin. Other members of the fictional family
recall other members of the Baldwin family. In particular, John’s stepfather Gabriel
is a recollection of David Baldwin. The book is divided into three sections. Told
from John Grimes’s perspective, the first section, “The Seventh Day,” establishes
John’s marginal position in the family. Denied by his stepfather, dismissed for his
unmanliness, ugliness, and intellect, his situation is at once intensely personal and
profoundly symbolic. As the rejected son, he embodies what Baldwin sees as the
historical experience of the African-American. Dispossessed of his birthright,
despised not least for his nascent homosexuality, he is like the “darker brother” in a
poem by Langston Hughes, “I, Too:” the generic racial figure who is excluded from
the American family, the table of communion. “What shall I do?” John asks himself.
The possible answers to that question are two, and they are investigated both in his
own story and that of his family. He can either see himself as others see him and
lapse into hatred and rejection of himself. The consequences of that are shame, guilt,
fear, or, perhaps, compensatory fantasy – all of which John succumbs to for a while.
Or he can struggle to accept and realize himself, to pursue the kind of self-realization
that Baldwin was thinking of on a larger, historical scale, when he wrote,
“the American Negro can no longer, nor will he ever again, be controlled by the
white American image of him.”
The second section of Go Tell It on the Mountain concentrates on John’s aunt,
stepfather, and mother, and offers variations on the theme of self-denial. Images of
dirt, darkness, grime (the pun on the family name is clearly intentional) evoke what
is to be denied, cleared away, got rid of; the dominant emotional pattern here is one
of retreat, repression, since all three older people choose to suppress and evade their
true feelings, to hide their true selves behind masks. What is additionally remarkable
about this second section is how Baldwin links the story of individuals to history.
Informing what we hear about the three characters is the substance of the African-
American experience, from slavery to the great migration. Enlivening every word we
hear are the rhythms of African-American speech and song. That sense of another,
racial dimension, deepening and enriching the personal fate, then feeds into the
final section, “The Threshing-Floor,” which recounts the struggle of John for his
own self, his own soul. In a complex religious experience, John moves from a sense
of damnation to one of salvation: a process that is coextensive with a movement
from rejection to acceptance of himself, from disgust to delight. What he accepts is
not only himself, the core of his being, but his community: “the multitude” of other
African-Americans who have suffered, encountered denial and shame, just as he has
done. The acceptance is expressed through speech and sound: sound that, we areGGray_c05.indd 654ray_c 05 .indd 654 8 8/1/2011 7:31:37 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 37 PM