Racism introduces absurdity into the human
condition. Not only does racism express the
absurdity of the racist, but it generates absur-
dity in the victims. And the absurdity of the
victims intensifies the absurdity of the racist,
ad infinitum. If one lives in a country where
racism is held valid and proactive in all ways of
life, eventually, no matter whether one is a rac-
ist or a victim, one comes to feel the absurdity
of life. (1)Although he would conduct a more in-depth
exploration of this existential premise in his post-
modern novel The Primitive (1955), Himes—
through his treatment and characterization of
Jones; Alice Harrison, Jones’s middle-class girl-
friend; and Madge Perkins, his middle-aged south-
ern white coworker—choreographs relationships
that can be described as absurd at best and dys-
functional at worst. The setting is four days in
Jones’s life in the San Pedro area of Los Angeles,
California, at the height of World War II. Jones,
a college-educated black male, works as the crew
leader of a segregated group of black workers in the
Atlas Shipyard. Despite his intellect and expertise,
Jones is demoted when Texas-born Madge, who
refuses to take instruction from a black man—a
“Nigger!”—complains to her white supervisor that
Jones has called her a “slut.”
Jones’s attempts to regain self-respect, a sense
of agency, and subjectivity prove fruitless. For ex-
ample, his effort to integrate an all-white, luxury
restaurant with light-skinned Alice fails when, al-
though they are seated, they are placed near the
kitchen. Equally disastrous are Jones’s attempts to
get even with, to kill, Johnny Stoddard, a white co-
worker who, during a fight, embarrassed him in
front of his crew, and his plot to visit Marge in her
apartment pretending to be sexually interested in
her, only to reject her. Jones abandons his plans
when, during their encounter, Marge becomes the
aggressor as she advances and demands that he
“rape” her. Shortly thereafter, when Marge accuses
Jones of rape and entraps him, her white cowork-
ers—committed to protecting white womanhood
at any cost, even the truth—beat Jones. Although
the charges are eventually dropped when Marge’s
nefarious plot is revealed, Jones, though innocent,
is forced to join the army and go off to war to
fight for and ensure the democracy he is denied at
home—the ultimate absurdity.
Living “between anger and void, nightmare
and consciousness” (Lee, 68), Jones, as character,
bears witness to the experience and contentions
of RICHARD WRIGHT’s Bigger Thomas in NATIVE
SON, feeling similarly trapped. Even after he con-
cedes to Alice that perhaps he needed to adjust
his ways of thinking “to the actual condition of
his life” (157) and resolves to live within the so-
ciopolitical constraints of American life, Jones
is forced to conclude that, as a black man living
in America, his destiny (Bigger’s fate) is in the
hands of whites. Jones’s reflections echo Bigger’s
personal convictions: “Sometimes I get the feel-
ing that I don’t have anything at all to say about
what’s happening to me. I’m just like some sort of
machine being run by white people pushing but-
tons. Every white person that comes along pushes
some button or other on me and I react accord-
ingly” (156). Jones confesses, “all I ever wanted
was just a little thing—just to be a man” (190).
However, as Roger Rosenblatt notes, “As for the
potential for violence in each hero, it becomes a
question of how they deal with their fears. When
Bigger is afraid, he acts to cover his fears. When
Bob is afraid, he thinks” (167). Thus, although
both Bigger and Bob respond with existential re-
sponsibility to the condition of their lives, Bigger,
who ends up in the electric chair, is more destruc-
tive, while Bob, despite being shipped off to the
war, is more creative.
Significantly, yet another evidence of the ab-
surd, the setting of If He Hollers is not the Ameri-
can South, where racism and segregation were
legally practiced and enforced through Jim Crow
law, but the West, Southern California, which, by
definition, was a more open society. Himes moves
his literary lens across a culturally diverse Califor-
nia to reveal the spectrum of an American racism
that was to be found, from the segregated Asian
community of Little Tokyo, located in the very
heartbeat of Los Angeles, to the black ghetto of
South Central Los Angeles. During a discussion
about “the race problem,” Himes reveals through264 If He Hollers Let Him Go