Baldwin Amen Corner Character Analysis Hypocrisy

Margaret opens the play by Baldwin by introducing the reader or audience to one of the themes of the play, which is what it means to be holy. Margaret is preaching to the congregation that when the world needs saving the world turns to the holy. She preaches that if they want to save the world, they have to be holy and that the holy keep themselves separate from the world. This idea is at the core of who Margaret is, for she left her worldly husband after her daughter died and she could not handle the grief. She blamed her husband’s worldliness and determined to be holy and to have her own church and to raise her son up in an environment different from that of his father’s.

Margaret is the protagonist of the play, but she is also the antagonist, because she is opposed to herself without even really realizing it. She states with regard to her son, “I praise my Redeemer that I got him raised right—even though I didn’t have no man….” (Baldwin 27). She leaves out the part about herself leaving her man. She is like a haunted character. It would seem that Luke, her husband, is the antagonist—but he is more like a ghost of Christmas Past come to haunt her and to remind her of her true self. Luke is not the antagonist, for he even rebukes Margaret at the end of the play and tells her that she should not have left him, that she was wrong to do so. He is giving her a lesson, an instruction, telling her that she has a wrong to right.

David is a minor character, but he could also be called an antagonist to the extent that he opposes his mother’s attempt to create a safe space in which to raise him. He does not really become an antagonist until the end, after he speaks to Luke and decides to become a jazz musician like his father. But something antagonistic is simmering below the surface of David throughout the play. It is even there in the beginning when he is hemming and hawing under the gaze and words of his mother about being late and playing the piano. It is clear that something is going on with David that is antagonistic to what his mother wants for him.

Another antagonist appears in Brother Boxer who believes Margaret is misleading the congregation after it becomes apparent that she has lied about her past and has tried to get Sister Ida to leave her husband just like Margaret did in her past. Brother Boxer wants Margaret to be held accountable for her hypocrisy.

Odessa is something of a static character in that she tries to defend Margaret by saying that Luke would have been a bad influence on David had Margaret stayed with her husband. She is a minor character as well though and is not really important to the action of the story. She is there to support Margaret and to make her sympathetic. She does help to give at least a decent argument on Margaret’s behalf that helps one to understand why she felt the need to create a safe space. She wanted to be holy, like in her sermon at the opening of the play. As Margaret says, “A saint of God ain’t got no business delivering liquor to folks all day…” (Baldwin 19). In other words, a saint has to be separate from the world—and that is what Margaret has sought to do.