In his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin divides his narrative into three distinct parts. The first section, “The Seventh Day,” sets the novel’s central action, what Shirley S. Allen, in “Religious Symbolism and Psychic Reality in Baldwin’s ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain,”’ calls John’s “initiation into manhood.” John completes…
Tag: James Baldwin
Go Tell It on the Mountain – Literary Devices
Setting The setting of James Baldwin’s novel – the impoverished part of New York known as Harlem, and more specifically the storefront church within the Harlem community – was undoubtedly a key reason for the book’s popularity upon its first publication, giving intellectuals an inside look at a world not many of them had known….
Go Tell It on the Mountain – Themes
Identity (Search For Self) Go Tell It on the Mountain is primarily about John Grimes’ quest to find out who he really is, to distinguish the values of those around him from the ones that he holds. It is no coincidence that the novel takes place on his birthday, which is the day representing a…
Go Tell It on the Mountain – Characters
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…
Go Tell It on the Mountain – Summary
Part I James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain chronicles the experiences of its young narrator, John Grimes, in Harlem in 1935. The novel opens on the morning of John’s fourteenth birthday and centers on the events that lead up 10 his spiritual conversion later that evening. The narrative also provides a history of…
Sonny’s Blues – Analysis
Each of us wants to live a life where we feel fulfilled and joyous. A few of us accomplish this with seemingly little effort; others struggle on their journey through periods of self doubt, rejection, depression, or the blues. James Baldwin was no different; yet while he struggled toward his own individual fulfillment, he began…
Sonny’s Blues – Setting
Bebop In the late 1930s and early 1940s, a new form of jazz music was being developed. The style, called “bebop,””bop,” or later,”hard bop,” centered on a very complex and abstract type of soloing during familiar tunes. Often in the solo, only the chords of the original melody would remain the same, and the tune…
Sonny’s Blues – Themes
In James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” a man finally comes to understand the darkness and suffering that consumes his brother, and he begins to appreciate the music that his brother uses to calm those blues. Suffering The main theme of “Sonny’s Blues” is suffering, particularly the sufferings of black people in America. Although James Baldwin presents…
Sonny’s Blues – Characters
Creole Creole is a bass player who leads the band that Sonny plays in at the end of the story. He functions as a kind of father figure for Sonny; he believes it is his purpose to guide Sonny through his blues and teach him how to turn them into music. He also attempts to…
Sonny’s Blues – Summary
James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” opens as the narrator learns from a newspaper that his younger brother, Sonny, has been arrested for dealing heroin. The narrator is taking the subway to his high-school teaching job. At the end of the school day, the “insular and mocking” laughter of his students reminds him that as youths he…