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Brutality In James Baldwin's Going To Meet The Man

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As post-racial as many American’s like to think that they are, their country has a history, and present, filled with racial violence and white supremacy. These prejudices are examined in James Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man.” Often, 20th century civil right era literature follows the perspective and life experiences of the minority. Baldwin rejects this approach and, instead, tells the story through the perspective of Jesse, a southern deputy sheriff. By telling the story through Jesse’s perspective, the pervasive nature of racism is shown at its most severe degree. This pervasive theme expands even further in Jesse’s need for brutality in order to be sexually fulfilled. By putting Jesse as the protagonist of the story, the audience can see …show more content…

In the first exchange of dialog, it is seen that Jesse has lost control of the situation. He wants to have sex, but, due to his impotence, he could only “just lay there, silent, angry, and helpless” (1328). In his day to day life, Jesse exerts his own autonomy as well as violating that of those around him, but here in his own home, his own bed, he has no control whatsoever. This lack of power feeds into itself, with Jesse transferring his own feelings of inadequacy to those he deems below himself. Yet, when his mind begins to wander, his thoughts find their way to an “image of a black girl” that “caused a distant excitement in him.” With his wife, Jesse finds sanctuary, even having a wish to burry himself into “her like a child and never have to get up” (1329). Though he seems to deeply care for his wife, this submissive thought is not bringing him closer to an erection. Instead, it is the thought of a black woman that gives him an excitement, believing that she could bring him “the spice” in his sex life that he couldn’t ask from Grace (1328). This spice can only be found in his act of dominance. As the story ends, Jesse remember the man in the fire and the knife that was used to mutilate his genitals. At his thought of dominance, Jesse strokes himself to arousal and then pushes this dominance onto his wife, inserting himself into the role a black

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Throughout the narrative, the author includes his personal stories about experiencing the violence of slavery first-hand. For example, on page 20, he writes about the first time he witnessed a slave, his own aunt, getting the whip. “The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest…I remember the first time I ever witnessed this horrible exhibition… It struck me with awful force. It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery…” The author including his experience of his aunts whipping, in detail, appeals to the emotions of the reader.

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The Corruption of Power “My mistress was...a kind and tender-hearted woman... Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, her tender heart became stone…” Douglass explained as he flashed back upon his memories of joy and suffering.

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In Baldwin’s second essay, “Down At the Cross Letter from a Region in my Mind”, Baldwin uses the different standards that black and white men are held to in order to highlight the representation of black men in America. Baldwin says, “In the United States, violence and heroism have been made synonymous except when it comes to blacks”(58). When Baldwin adds this, it shows the reader the stark contrast between the lives of black and white

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Beneath the literal brutal violence the narrator is forced into is an overwhelmingly obvious display of severe racism. It is a figurative violence between the rich and powerful whites and the struggling oppressed blacks. The violence is

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When Douglass is living with Master Hugh’s family, he sees for the first time a white person who treats him like a human being. Douglass uses metonymy to illustrate her dehumanization, an effect of the power of holding a slave: “Under [slavery’s] influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamb-like disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness” (Douglass 43). The words “tender heart” are an example of metonymy that alludes to the woman as a whole because she is known to be compassionate. As slavery integrates itself in his mistress’s life, her “lamb-like” nature is abraded and the “tiger-like fierceness” is the consequence of slavery. Douglass’ epiphany is that this corruption not only affects the slave but society as a whole.

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Baldwin concludes that in order to move toward solving “the Negro Problem” in America, we must be willing to expand our ways of thinking about and experiencing the

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race-relations through the lens of the Negro problem. According to Baldwin, "the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar, and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations. I said it was intended that you should perish, in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go beyond and behind the white man's definition" (Baldwin 18). In turn, James Baldwin argues how white Americans viewed Black Americans’ “inferiority” and upheld the ideas of white supremacy in mid-20th century America. Nevertheless, he implicitly suggests that a white man’s identity is inextricably bound to his own internalized idea of superiority (Baldwin 21).

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Our narrator has, in the beginning, a judgemental view on black people. This is because of her granny, “Granny has brought me up on stories about what nigger men do to little white girls if they get the chance. Some nights I have screaming dreams about her story of turpentine niggers raping and strangling a poor little white girl who took a wrong path on the way home from school and stiffing her dead body in a hollow log”. Once again racism is a factor, also the fact that they are referring to them as “niggers”. In spite of the narrator’s point of view, in the beginning, she begins to have her own opinion, this is because of Jesse, her dad’s workmate.

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