2 - A Glimpse of the Hidden God: Dialectical Visions in Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain

Summary

Just above my head

I hear music in the air

And I really do believe

There's a God somewhere.

(gospel song)

The whole question … of religion has always really obsessed me.

A Rap on Race 83

James Baldwin is most commonly viewed in both the popular mind and the scholarly community as the eloquent voice of black rage of the 1960s and the prophet of black exasperation with the failures of the civil rights movement as expressed in the rebellions in the cities. The virtual association of Baldwin with black militancy and, at its extreme, the spirit of black vengeance of the late 60s is highly ironic, however, when one considers Baldwin's insistence that hatred of any kind amounts to self-destruction and that the individual bears responsibility to himself or herself for attaining self-knowledge and to others for offering reconciliation and love. Given his considerable, understandable anger, his explicit role as witness for African-Americans, and his exaggerated image as the enraged prophet of retribution, Baldwin would seem perhaps the least likely writer to assert the redemptive power of suffering, partly because such an association would contribute to the misperception that he was retrograde and reactionary. Yet he expands that theme implicitly through the early novels, plays, and essays, and through his middle and later work he continues to explore it despite considerable risk and damage to his reputation.