The Vision In Joe Turner's Come And Gone

The Vision in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone In August Wilson’s play Joe Turner’s Come and Gone there was a character named Herald Loomis. At the end of Act 1 that character had a vision. My interpretation of the vision is that it was a depiction of the freeing of slaves and their fight for normal lives. The vision Loomis had started with skeletons rising up out of the water, which I believe symbolised the slaves themselves, fighting for freedom. Finally walking above the water instead of drowning in it. They were slowly coming out of the oppression that they knew so well. They marched because they were one unit, a people, fighting that oppression. The size of the water was an example of how far slavery had traveled, “...to this water that was

The sky broke open and the ground shook, the world changed drastically and would never be the same again. The people got up and headed toward the road, they headed toward a normal life. They split up and waved goodbye to the others as they made their way. They said goodbye to people they knew in order to make for themselves a new life. They went on to live their lives as freed men, as human beings. They need not ask anyone permission to live the way they chose. Loomis, like some of the others, could not get up, could not join them because his freedom was taken. Joe Turner took him away from the life he had built to be enslaved again. He was unable to stand up, to live his life, because Joe Turner took that away. Even though it had been three years since his was freed from Joe Turner, he was still held down by his missing wife. He could not be free until he got closure for the life Turner took from him. He did finally “stand up”, when he freed himself from his wife and child and the life that was taken from him. He cuts open his chest and released the life that had tormented him for so long. The meaning of the vision in August Wilson’s play Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is heavily debated. Wilson used a lot of symbolism for what I believe to be a message on the mistreatment of the black man and the change that was seen in that time period and the next few decades after that. From the water to the struggle to stand, there