Summary Of Joe Turner's Come And Gone By August Wilson

August wilson's play Joe Turner's Come and Gone is a powerful play that portrays the experience of slavery in the past of African Americans society. This play strongly shows life of black Americans through several different characters, which can be seen as a one whole community of theirs. A clear picture is shown of how they had to fight in order to regain their existence and real identity(not as slaves) in the real world society. So, in the play, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, August Wilson presents a few subject matter of displacement, racial discrimination and pursuit of identity. This play does not exactly falls exactly into one particular single genre of drama , but the best we can say is that it is a hybrid of Tragedy, Melodrama,Comedy and Farce. As for my personal view, it lies under the characteristic of Melodrama.

A character Herald Loomis who believes he is in search of his wife named Martha. But one of the character who is the African conjurer known as Bynum says that Loomis is actually searching for his identity or as his song.Bynum’s vision of the shiny man, Loomis’ vision of bones walking upon the water and sinking and again leaving him on the shore unable to stand these scenes from the play is related to identity. Loomis’s long enslavement by a plantation owner known as Joe Turner has resulted him to forget his identity and his song. Bynum says:”Now he’s got bound up to where you can’t sing your own song. Couldn’t sing it them seven years”cause you was afraid he would snatch it from under you.” Loomis is just a illustrative of several African Americans who were illegally forced for enslavement, away from their