Seeking Identity Under God: A Religious Study Of Go Tell It On The Mountain

Religion is a significant element in African-American culture. Literature involving religion fascinates African-American writers and the relative topic constitutes one of their thematic traditions. Critics Richard K. Barksdale and Keneth Kinnamon point out that"the appeal of Christianity has been one of the primary preoccupations of black American"(2). The early African-American writer Phillis Wheatley once wrote poems in the 1760s and thanked the fate that had delivered her from a heathen Africa to Christian American (even though slaveholding). Frederick Douglass also recognized the appeal of Christianity in his 1845 narrative. Black spirituals are omnipresent that shout out their happiness and convey their frustrations to God. Into this religious-laden soil was born James Baldwin, one of the most important African-American writers after Richard Right and Ralph Ellison.James Baldwin was born into a Christian family in1924 and had served as priest in the local church for three years. These experiences have left significant impact on Baldwin's aesthetic concept and composition theme. Like other writers of minority ethnic group, Baldwin appeals to identity topic, too. He has once claimed that he is an artist and also a Negro, and he has to deal with both. His role is to"make you realize…who you are and what you are"(qtd. in Ryan 177). By that claim, Baldwin indicates his duty as a black artist in constructing the individual and collective identity of his people.Go Tell It on the Mountain is James Baldwin's first and also his autobiographical fiction. The story focuses on the painful experience of the protagonist, John Grimes, in his converting to Christianity. On the threshing floor in the church, multiple voices echo in John Grimes'mind that respectively represent: stepfather's oppression, blood father's love, mother's edification, worldly pleasure attractiveness, religious wonder and his instinct of being spiritual-lifted. These voices are fighting each other and make little Johnny's conversion to Christianity rather hard. Knelt down before God is not only John, but also those adults. Their submission to God does not completely come from their religious faith but to seek a gimmick in abating their spiritual burdens. Baldwin uses his familiar biblical injunctions and epigraphs to make his narrative rather appealing and particular.By presenting a kaleidoscope of black characters that have undergone different growing experiences and finally knelt down before God, Baldwin conveys us a message that how black people are seeking their individual identities in the framework of religion. To make it further, we will get a glimpse of how African-Americans'collective identity seeking is religiously marked.The thesis attempts to demonstrate how the characters seek their respective identity and focuses on how religion works in their road of identity seeking. The concept of identity may have many different interpretations. George Kent defines it as"a functional being"(17). To seek identity is to settle down the feelings of"dislocations and disintegrations"(Kent 17), coming to a complete and peaceful self. This thesis sings the similar tune.The thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter One introduces African-American religion background and its religious thematic tradition in literature. Baldwin's religious experience and exploration in writing are offered, too. The literary reviews on Go Tell on the Mountain are summarized to pave the road to develop this thesis.Chapter Two deals with religious allusions and symbolism in the novel in relation to the protagonist John Grimes'winning his spiritual independence and psychological maturity.Chapter Three presents a group of characters in the novel, an epitome of African-American ethnic group, seeking their identity in the framework of religion.Chapter Four comes to Baldwin's ambivalent narratives in this fiction. Through his skillful and discordant narratives, Baldwin successfully exhibits a group of fragmented characters. By developing this thesis, I wonder how religion impacts on Baldwin's characters'seeking their true, functional and harmonious identity. Based on this, we may come to dig out the hidden reason for their identity crisis and how religion functions in their identity seeking.