Go Tell It on the Mountain: A Review of Baldwin's Novel

Introduction

James Baldwin's first novel is a classic coming-of-age story set in New York during the Harlem Renaissance. Reading Go Tell It on the Mountain gives the reader insight into what it is like to be Black in America, and what it means to rebel and search for identity within Black society. The following review shares personal responses to the novel and offers some thoughts on possible directions for further research in the field of African-American literature.

John's Coming-of-Age and Parental Conflict

Baldwin's story is moving and memorable. It follows the young protagonist, John, with pathos and understanding. Clearly, Baldwin drew on personal experience in what he wrote, and he understood the longings and anxieties that plagued a fourteen-year-old growing up in Harlem in 1935. John wants desperately to please his father, as most young people do, but the barrier between them is far too great for John to understand or overcome.

It is quite easy to empathize with John and his adolescence, because the experience of growing up is universal. His struggles suggest that regardless of race, we all share the same insecurities and longings as we turn from children into adults. John thinks to himself, "And he wanted to be one of them, playing in the streets, unfrightened, moving with such grace and power, but he knew this could not be" (Baldwin 30). Struggling to conform to his father's strict discipline and religious morality, John is denied some of the simple pleasures of youth, and this will only deepen his alienation from his father over time. Baldwin's text serves as a nearly step-by-step illustration of what not to do as a parent, and of the consequences that parental rigidity can have on children — who either rebel or become sullen and withdrawn.

Spiritually, this is a commanding novel, filled with the joy of religious fervor and abandonment. The believers of the Temple of the Fire Baptized typify the Black religious experience of the era. These people live extremely difficult lives, and the spiritual release they find in their church is the only escape they have from day-to-day struggle. It is truly a spiritual refuge from the reality of their circumstances, and without it, many would likely not survive emotionally or physically.

Spirituality and the Black Church Experience

John represents the new generation of Black Americans who envision more for themselves than Harlem offers, and who turn away from the church because of the unnecessary restrictions its fervent members impose on their families. The spiritual content of the novel was the most difficult portion to read, because the rules John's father enforced in the name of the Lord were so extreme that even John had to question their value. It seems unreasonable that the boy could not play with his peers or enjoy a film — these things did not make him any less spiritual. In fact, his father's insistence on strict religious conformity pushed his sons down a very different path, which is entirely understandable.

John's questioning of both his father's beliefs and his own is also understandable, especially since John has always felt like an outsider in his own home. That is the underlying problem with Gabriel's spirituality. The reader understands that Gabriel is a fraud whose life has been filled with sin and deceit. John does not know that Gabriel is not his biological father, and perhaps if he did, his struggle for self-awareness would not be quite so painful. Gabriel's spirituality serves only his own sense of guilt and sin, and his forcing of it upon his family is difficult to witness and to read about.

The second section of the novel, written in stream of consciousness and covering the adults in their spiritual release, is also demanding to work through at times, and it slowed the book's momentum until the narrative returned to John's story and the main action. Nevertheless, the flashbacks offer rich insight into the adults' lives and help establish how Black Americans lived at the turn of the twentieth century. They add texture and depth to the novel, and deepen the reader's understanding of what it was like to be Black, poor, and with little hope for the future.

Conclusion

Go Tell It on the Mountain is a classic story of youth versus parent, and of the questioning of parental values and expectations. John's coming of age centers on his resentment of his father even as he longs to please a man who cannot be pleased. "Are you saved, boy?" "Yes," said John, "Oh, yes!" And the words came upward, it seemed, of themselves, in the new voice God had given him" (Baldwin 178). John has offered his father the ultimate gift — his soul — but there will always be animosity and distrust between the two of them.

Sometimes lyrical and sometimes somewhat convoluted, the text is largely a joy to read, though it does bog down in some of the stream-of-consciousness flashbacks and the heavier religious passages. It is a novel that powerfully evokes what it is like to be Black in America, and what it means to struggle against the societal expectations of others while searching for your own identity.

Baldwin, James. Go Tell It on the Mountain. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953.