Shame, Rage, and Endless Battle: Systemic Pressure and Individual Violence in James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain

Abstract

����� ��� Florence, the aunt of James Baldwin’s protagonist in Go Tell It on the Mountain, has little faith in the transformative effects of religious conversion. Near the middle of the novel, she says, “These niggers running around, talking about the Lord done changed their hearts—ain’t nothing happened to them niggers. They got the same old black hearts they was born with” (182). She uses her brother Gabriel as her prime example of this failure to change. Florence repeatedly challenges Gabriel’s assertion that he has changed, saying that he “was born a fool, and always done been a fool” (38–39), that he is “born wild, and [he is] going to die wild” (44), and that “he ain’t thought a minute about nobody in this world but himself” (84). It is not only Gabriel’s abuse of his family that leads Florence to believe that he does not and cannot change, but also the secret he keeps from his family and from members of the Temple of the Fire Baptized. While Gabriel claims to be sanctified and living a holy life, he has committed adultery, fathered an illegitimate son, and then abandoned the woman and his child. To Florence, he is the same man he was before his conversion experience: selfish, lustful, and oppressive, “no better than a murderer” (84). Critics tend to share Florence’s negative perception of her brother. Depending on their perspective on Christianity, Gabriel is either a personification of a vengeful, misogynist, and even racist God (see Macebuh; Warren; Ikard; Csapo), or an example of a “bad” Christian who uses religion as a front to bolster his own power while secretly engaging in “sinful” activities that he preaches against in public (for example see Lunden; Hardy; Porter). Both Trudier Harris and Vivan May take the latter line of critique a step further, suggesting that Gabriel fakes his conversion in order to gain tyrannical authority over those around him. Even more sympathetic readings of Gabriel end up condemning him. Peter Powers sees Gabriel’s struggle against his sexual desire as sincere but interprets his conversion as a “gimmick” that enables him to maintain a position of social power in the face of a racist society, ultimately emphasizing Gabriel’s failure (800). I want to suggest that these scholars misread the novel’s critique of the African-American Christianity in general and the Black Holiness Christianity in particular. 1 I argue that Go Tell It on the Mountain does not portray Gabriel simply as a villainous character who commits emotional