Composed during the writer's so-called Transitional Period, Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka's Dutchman is a work that has confounded audiences with its political allusion to the biblical story of Adam and Eve, since its conception and presentation some 37 years ago. The writer's own evolution is reflected in his protagonist's movement away from the whipped and bound, assimilated Black male toward the postures of a radical poet screaming his madness into the face of the white world.

The play opens with Clay, a young black poet, on his way to a friend's party. Glancing through the window of the subway car he rides, he sees Lula, an attractive white woman. Seemingly intrigued by his glance, Lula boards the train and introduces herself. Over the course of the slow train ride, Lula and Clay alternately seduce and repel each other until Lula drives Clay to his feet and towards his destiny. Clay's questions and desires, fears and triumphs all ring from the sound of deep reflection.

Dutchman emulated the ideas of the avant-garde theater at the same time that it reflected the questions posed by African Americans to whites in the 1960's, particularly the question

In Dutchman, Jones makes it clear that though the Black man is a victim in the white world, he must find his power and his voice, as Clay does right before he is murdered. He must work toward the destruction of the white man's world and kill that Self within that craves to possess all that the white man possess, including the white woman.

By seeking the companionship of the white woman and all that has been denied him, Clay is being untrue to his Blackness; untrue to himself. He is the double agent suffering from the double consciousness booby trap. He is lured to his death through his white self because of his Blackness. He is lured to his death by the white woman. Lula is at first a dream deferred-not the white woman, per se, but the exclusivity that she symbolizes. Lula is an icon.

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r possibilities in a new relationship.

The question is then posed in Dutchman: is this revolutionary Black male character ready to die for the love and possession of the white woman as trophy? The work confronts the contradictions that are hallmark of the colonized Black mind, in particular, the Bla

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Approximate Word count = 802
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)