Go Tell It On A Mountain Research Paper

Paper #3 A mystical experience can have a great impact on the lives of those who experience them. They may be rare and transcendent, but their impact is deep and may have a significant impact on one’s life. We often imagine that these experiences only happen to those with saintly characteristics that have a deep connection with the divine. However, they can also occur to those in ordinary life. In his first novel, Go Tell It On a Mountain, James Baldwin does exactly that; he shows how mystical experiences can occur in ordinary life. A Christian mystical experience can be a source of liberation and at the same time can contribute to continued violence depending on the social situation that is central to the person to whom the mystical experience

Since John was so young, it is clear that any sort of intense experience will have a dramatic impact on his life, either one that is positive or negative. His religious transformation occurs in the final section of the novel. Baldwin describes that, “… Something moved in John’s body which was not John. He was invaded, set at naught, possessed. This power had struck John, in the head or in the heart; and in a moment, wholly, filling him with an anguish, that he could never in his life have imagined”. (227) This was an overwhelming power that came upon John - one that was painful and encompassing his entire body. This was the power of the Holy Spirit that went through John and at the end of this vision he sees the Lord. This experience was very much overwhelming and intense for a young boy of his age. John realized that the presence of the Lord was all around him. Later on, John actually comes to see the Lord. “Then John saw the Lord - for a moment only; and the darkness, for a moment only, was filled with a light he could not bear”. (240) Again, we sense the overwhelming power of the Lord in John’s life. The family members of John congratulate him on his new faith and John promises he will pray to God and stand against his enemies while his father tells him that he must live the faith and not only speak of it. (245) The book ends ambiguously,