Elisha
Seventeen years old and recently arrived in Harlem from Georgia, Elisha is the nephew of the pastor of the Temple of the Fire of the Baptized. He has been publicly chastised in front of the congregation for “walking disorderly” with Ella Mae Washington, meaning that they had been walking without supervision and might have given in to temptation and had sex. J
ohn is infatuated with Elisha. At Sunday school, “John stared at Elisha all during the lesson, admiring the timbre of Elisha’ s voice, much deeper and manlier than his own, admiring the leanness, and grace, and darkness of Elisha in his Sunday suit, and wondering if he would ever be holy as Elisha was holy.” While clearing the church to prepare for the Saturday evening tarry meeting, John and Elisha wrestle: He saw the veins rise on EIisha’s forehead and in his neck … and John, watching these manifestations of his power, became wild with delight.”
John’s spiritual possession follows Elisha’s, both in style and in time, raising the question of whether it is a true religious experience or just an imitation. At the end of the novel Elisha kisses John on the forehead and tells him, “Run on, little brother. Don’t you get weary. God won’t forget you. You won’t forget.”
Elizabeth
Early in the novel, as the Grimes family goes about their Saturday morning chores, Elizabeth, the mother, appears to be an apologist for her husband’s brutality, explaining to her children that Gabriel works hard to provide for them. She is kind to John; she is the only one in the family to remember his birthday, and she tries to distract the family with prayer when, after Gabriel has slapped her, Roy curses his father and tells him to leave her alone. It is not until much later in the novel that the reasons for her meekness appear.
Like the other characters, her childhood was a difficult one. Her mother, a cold woman that Elizabeth did not love, died when she was young, and her aunt, who thought Elizabeth was snobbish, took custody of her so she would not be raised by her father, who ran a house of prostitution. Elizabeth was devastated, because she loved her father dearly. When she was eighteen she met Richard at the local store and fell in love with him. When he moved to New York, she did too, but to keep up her reputation she lived with a “respectable” relative of her aunt, who was actually a spiritualist who conducted seances on Saturday nights. Elizabeth and Richard both worked in the same hotel and were planning to marry when he had enough money saved. He killed himself, though, before Elizabeth could tell him about her pregnancy.
When the baby was born, she withdrew from society, and despaired that the child, John, would never have a father. At work, she became acquainted with Florence, and through her met Gabriel. Gabriel took an interest in her son, and when he proposed to Elizabeth he told her he would “love John just like my own,” a promise clearly broken in the favoritism he shows for Roy.
Ella Mae
The granddaughter of Praying Mother Washington, she was called before the congregation early in the novel for spending time with Elisha without an escort. After John has undergone his spiritual transformation, Ella Mae is noticeably absent: “She had a bad cold, said Praying Mother Washington, and needed to have her rest.”
Florence
In the novel, Florence has two secrets. One is that she is dying, and this is why, to John’s surprise, she shows a sudden interest in going to church. The second is that she knows, through a letter sent her thirty years earlier by Gabriel’s first wife, that her brother had fathered a child out of wedlock with one of the local girls. “For she had always thought of this letter as an instrument in her hands which could be used to complete her brother’s destruction. When he was completely cast down she would prevent him from ever rising again by holding before him the evidence of his blood-guilt.”
At the end of the novel, the day he is “completely cast down” turns out to be the day his stepson John enters the religious community. The letter is from Deborah, a friend from a neighboring farm when they were growing up. As children, Florence and Deborah each had experiences that made them angry and frustrated. Deborah was gangraped by white men and shunned by the black community because of it, and Florence lost her chance to go to school, have new clothes or even eat a hearty meal when her mother gave all privileges to Gabriel because he was a boy. Florence left home at age twenty-six and Deborah later married Gabriel.
Florence moved to Harlem where she met Frank, who was a kind, good-natured man but was foolish with money. Florence dreamed of owning a home, but Frank wasted his paychecks on ugly presents for her and on drinking with his friends. When she last saw him, they were in the middle of an argument and he said, “All right, baby. I guess you don’t never want to see me no more, not a miserable, black sinner like me.” He walked out of the door and never came back. Years later, the woman he had lived with most recently informed Florence that he had died in France during World War I.
Frank
Florence’s husband Frank was a good-natured but weak man, always spending money foolishly instead of saving it, inviting his drunken friends over and constantly apologizing to Florence. One day, during an argument, he walked out, and though she expected him to return that night, or the next morning, he never came back. She found out that he had died in France during the war from the woman that he had lived with for a few years after he had left her.
Gabriel
John’s father is a deacon at the local church in Harlem, and he had a successful career as a preacher when be was young, but he started life as a troubled boy who broke church laws by drinking. gambling and having sex with women. Gabriel’s mother was harsh with him, trying to correct his behavior with spanking and forcing religion on him: “And, after the beating, with his pants still down around his knees and his face wet with tears and mucus, Gabriel was made to kneel down while his mother prayed.”
His behavior did not change. though, until he was twenty-one, when his sister Florence left home and Gabriel was left to care for his aging, sick mother by himself. Faced with the silent watchfulness of his once-fiery mother. he begged God with prayers that he would be able to leave his evil ways and follow a religious life. One day. as he was to repeatedly tell the story. his prayers were answered : “I opened my mouth to the Lord that day and Hell won’t make me change my mind.”
Soon after this he began preaching, and made such a name for himself that he was invited to be one of twenty-four preachers on the bill for a “monster revival meeting.” Disgusted with the crude remarks the older preachers made about a neighbor girl, Deborah, who had been gang-raped by whites when she was young, Gabriel soon married her , confirming his religious sincerity to himself. But it was an unhappy marriage. and when one of the other employees where he worked showed an interest he ended up sleeping with her. The affair with Esther lasted nine days. Gabriel was cold to her in breaking it off and even colder in refusing to help when she told him she was pregnant. “She put out her hands to reach him, but he moved away”-with that gesture of rejection and denial his life became a web of deceit that ruined his early promise as a preacher.
Esther died in childbirth. naming the infant Royal to spite Gabriel, who had wanted a son named Royal “because the line of the faithful is a Royal line.” The boy was raised by his grandparents and died in a knife fight in Chicago. never knowing that he was Gabriel’s son. After Deborah died, Gabriel moved to Harlem, and at the lime of the novel he is married 10 Elizabeth and raising John, who she had before she met him; Roy. the new Royal, who should be the start of his Royal line but who drinks and fights as Gabriel did as a young man; and two girls, Sarah and Ruth .
Deborah Grimes
Deborah grew up as a neighbor to Gabriel and Florence, When they were young. a gang of white men raped Deborah, and when her father went to threaten them for what they had done, they beat him and left him for dead. Deborah and Florence were friends growing up, and when Florence left to live in the North, Deborah became close to Rachel, Florence’s mother. Eventually Gabriel married Deborah, but they had a cold marriage: she did not talk: with him, possibly because she was in awe of his religious authority, and he was secretive about his feelings. When Gabriel cried upon hearing that his son Royal had been killed, Deborah told him that she had known about this son all along, and would have been willing to raise it as her own if he had asked her to.
John Grimes
One of the first things to cross John’s mind when he wakes up at the novel’s beginning is “that it was his fourteenth birthday and that he has sinned.” The particular sin he refers to appears to be a combination of homosexuality and masturbation, as he had “sinned with his hands” while in the bathroom at school, “thinking of the boys, older, bigger, braver, who made bets with each other as to whose urine could arch higher.” It soon becomes apparent, though, that John is likely to feel like a sinner no matter what he does-his stepfather, a Deacon of the Temple of the Fire Baptized, has physically and verbally abused John all his life, showing favor to John’s younger brother Roy.
Gabriel Grimes married John’s mother when John was young, and he does not know that he and Roy are of different fathers. As a result of the abuse he suffers, John harbors a hatred of shocking intensity toward his stepfather: “He lived for the day his father would be dying and he, John, would curse him on his deathbed.” In balance to Gabriel’s destruction of his self-esteem is John’s secret satisfaction that he has been chosen for something better in life. He is a shy, awkward boy, but “he apprehended totally, without belief or understanding, that he had within himself a power that other people lacked; that he could use this to save himself; and that, perhaps, with this power he might one day win the love which he longed for.”
When it appears to him that his family has forgotten his birthday, John bitterly tells himself that it is all right, that they have done it before and he deserves no better, but his mother gives him money to buy a present and he is grateful to her. He goes to a movie in Times Square and finds himself sympathizing with the villainess, a “violent and unhappy woman,” because “nothing tamed or broke her, nothing touched her, neither kindness, nor scorn, nor hatred, nor love.”
The one person in the book that John respects and admires is Elisha, a boy at the church who is just a little older than him. They joke around in a tender, sparring way while setting up for the Saturday evening service, then they wrestle. In the novel’s climax in Part Three John’s spirituality is confirmed to the church members when he falls to the “threshing-floor” in a fit of religious ecstasy, flailing about and talking in unknown languages. The elders of the church (Sister McCandless, Sister Price and Praying Mother Washington) are delighted that he has “got religion,” and Elisha takes responsibility for him as a “little brother.”
His stepfather is hesitant to believe in John’s spiritual conversion and points out that “it ain’t all in the singing and the shouting-the way of holiness is a hard way,” reflecting his own inability to lead a good life. John himself seems skeptical that what happened to him was a meaningful, lasting religious conversion, but he is glad for the way that it gains him social status and binds him to Elisha.
Rachel Grimes
Gabriel and Florence’s mother, who had been a slave before the Civil War.
Roy Grimes
John’s younger half-brother, Roy is actually the second son named Royal to be fathered by Gabriel-the first died in a knife fight before Gabriel moved to New York and married Elizabeth. As his only son, Gabriel favors Roy, even though Gabriel thinks of himself as a man of God and Roy is wild, skipping Sunday school and arguing with his mother and hanging out in the streets with a gang.
On the Saturday in 1935 that this novel takes place, Roy comes home with a knife cut across his face, having been in a fight. His father is unable to accept Roy’s wild ways, so he turns the situation on meek, churchgoing John, telling him that he should learn a lesson from this. When Elizabeth reminds Gabriel of the fate of the first Royal by telling him to discipline Roy “before somebody puts another knife in him and puts him in his grave,” Gabriel slaps her. Roy shouts with incredible daring at the abusive man: “You slap her again, you black bastard, and I swear to God I’ll kill you.”
Sister McCandless
One of the women who attends tarry services on Saturday night at the Temple of the Fire Baptized.
Esther McDonald
Gabriel had given up sinning and married Deborah when he met Esther, and before long he was having an affair with her. The affair only lasted for nine days before he ended it, but Esther came to him weeks later and told him she was pregnant. When Gabriel refused to leave Deborah and marry her, Esther decided not to blackmail him with public disclosure of her pregnancy. Showing a religious fervor that he could never get her to feel with his preaching, she said, “I shamed before my God-to make somebody make me cheap, like you done.” She moved North with money Gabriel gave her and died while giving birth to Royal.
Royal McDonald
Gabriel’s first son, Royal was raised by his grandparents in the town that Gabriel lived in, but he never found out who his father was. Deborah befriended Royal’s parents and gave Gabriel periodic updates on the boy’s life. The last time Gabriel saw Royal, there had been a racial incident in town, and white men were looking for any black man they could abuse. Gabriel thought of revealing his identity, but the fear of being caught in the street talking made him mutter a weak warning to Royal and hurry away. Two years later word came that Royal had been killed in a knife fight in Chicago.
Sister Price
One of the women who attends tarry services on Saturday night at the Temple of the Fire Baptized.
Richard
Richard was John’s father, Elizabeth’s true love. She had moved to New York to be with him, and they planned to be married, but one night after dropping her at her doorstep, while waiting on the subway platform, Richard was arrested. Three black robbers, escaping the police, had run past him, and the police had assumed he was with them and arrested him, held him in jail and tortured him to confess. He was released for lack of evidence, but the night of his release he slit his wrists, having never found out that Elizabeth was pregnant.
Praying Mother Washington
One of the women who attends tarry services on Saturday night at the Temple of the Fire Baptized.
Madame Williams
Elizabeth’s aunt that she lived with when she moved to Harlem. Madame Williams is a spiritualist, conducting seances in her apartment on Saturday nights.
Source Credits:
Marie Rose Napierkowski, Novels for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context & Criticism on Commonly Studied Novels, Volume 4, James Baldwin, Gale-Cengage Learning, 1998