My Christ In Dutchman Analysis

In an article called "My Christ in Dutchman", George Adams argues that Lula, the white female protagonist of the play, is a modern Eve who offers Clay, a middle class Negro and the new Adam, both concrete "apples" and symbolic fruit "her body and self-knowledge" in an attempt to draw him away from Eden, "America". According to this view, Clay accepts both gifts and reveals knowledge of the forbidden truth which is his real black self. In doing so, Clay oversteps the limits of a racial society through showing his real self (which is threatening to white America), thus, he is dismissed out of Eden. Adams also argues that the black young man who appears in the subway car by the end of the play "will rise as a black messiah, to redeem both

Nevertheless, such a union between Clay and Lula can never exist in what Larry Neal calls "the twisted psyche of white America" (34). Neal's point is relevant because in Jones' world a normal relation between whites and blacks is impossible. Ironically, the symbolic, sexual union between Clay and Lula leads to the victimization and murder of Clay. A great deal of the criticism on Dutchman reveals that some critics approach the play from a Euro-American perspective while ignoring the black revolutionary issues which operate in the play. This kind of criticism is irrelevant because it dissociates the play from its black literary tradition and attempts to link it either with Christianity, the white man's religion, or with white literature and mythology (the myth of the Flying Dutchman). A close analysis of Jones' literary essays and the text of the play reveals that Dutchman fulfils the purposes of the revolutionary black theatre in the sixties in his essay, "The Revolutionary