Joe Turner's Come And Gone Literary Devices

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is set during a complex time period during the history of black people in the United States. It is set during the Great Migration period, during which many African Americans had started to migrate north and leave the south to escape oppression, racism and find better employment other than sharecropping. The author August Wilson uses multiple types of literary devices, mainly imagery in the form of storytelling which contributes heavily to the development of the story within Wilsons universe. These stories told by characters in the story have multiple natures such as pain and trauma, depicted with Herald Loomis sharing his experiences about Joe Turner. Another nature would be mystery such as Bynum when he talks about

He is said to have “fixing” or “binding” powers of some sort and is even sought out for these abilties by other characters within the book. He has an encounter on the road and he shares this story to Seth and Selig. He starts by explaining how a man lured him to a remote place and he explains what he saw. “Turn around that bend and everything look like it was twice as big as it was. The trees and everything bigger than life! Sparrows big as eagles! I turned around to look at this fellow and he had this light coming out of him. I had to cover up my eyes to keep from being blinded. He shining like new money…looked over and seen my daddy standing there. He was the same…My daddy called me to him. Said he had been thinking about me and it grieved him to see me in the world carrying other people’s songs and not having one of my own. Told me he was gonna show me how to find my song. Then he carried me further into this big place until we came to this ocean. Then he showed me something I ain’t got words to tell you. But if you stand to witness it, you have seen something there. I stayed in that place for a while and my daddy taught me the meaning of this thing that I had seen and showed me how to find my song. I asked him about the shiny man and he told me he was the One Who Goes Before and Shows the Way. Said there was lots of shiny men and if I ever saw one again before I died then I would know that my song had been accepted and worked its full power in the world and I could lay down and die a happy man. A man who done left his mark on life. On the way people cling to each other out of the truth they find in themselves. Then he showed me how to ger back to the road. I came out to where everything was its own size and I had my song. I had the Binding Song. I choose that song because that’s what I seen most when I was traveling ... people walking away and leaving one another. So I takes the power of my