Go Tell It On the Mountain
The black man's everlasting struggle to achieve equality and fairness has progressed into an epic odyssey bound by only the human limits. From torture to civility, the life of a black man over the centuries has undergone dramatic and beneficial changes from which complete equality will not be achieved until the 1990s. With slavery disappearing in 1860s, the black man has to endure an entire century of segregation, lynching, and bigotry before he is seen as an equal to the white man. James Baldwin's use of racial injustice in his book Go Tell It On The Mountain reflects the racial discrimination and prejudice of the post-World War II era.In this novel, John is the character who suffers racial prejudice from the outside and his stepfather's hatred on the inside tormenting him into oblivion. Gabriel Grimes, John's step father, 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 be
en chosen for something better in life. He is 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 bitterl! Kunitz, Stanley. Twentieth Century Authors. New York, NY: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1979. Although the black man's struggle to achieve equality and fairness was not achieved, Baldwin though did reveal the true sufferings of a Negro and a homosexual like himself. With Uncle Tom's Cabin being the main instigator of the Civil War, James Baldwin's Go Tell It On The Mountain added gasoline to the already burning fire of racial equality. The impartiality that the blacks receive today would probably not have been achieved if it was not for James Baldwin and his famous character, John. Bell, Pearl K. "New Leader" Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 5. New York: Gale Research Inc., 1990. 40-41. "James Arthur Baldwin." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Vol. 1. 1998. mbo' cliches of white fiction, he now portrays the white American with equal cartoon crudity. It is as if the black American must now begin to invent the white American, his white American, in order to discover his own identity. [7 pg 44]
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Approximate Word count = 1350
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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