Heroes and Anti-Heroes: Racism in Himes and Paredes
This paper offers a comparative literary analysis of Chester Himes's If He Hollers, Let Him Go and Americo Paredes's With His Pistol in His Hand, examining how both works expose structural racism in America through their respective protagonists. Set against the backdrop of wartime Los Angeles and the Texas–Mexico border, the paper traces the ways in which racial prejudice—both overt and institutionalized—constrains the lives of Bob Jones and Gregorio Cortez. The analysis considers how both authors use narrative, folklore, and personal experience to compel readers toward social awareness and activism, ultimately arguing that only a critical, conscientized perspective can make structural and cultural violence visible to those who remain privileged within it.
- Introduction: Structural Racism in Two American Stories: Contextualizes both novels within American racial history
- Arguing the Long-Term Consequences of Racism: Traces systemic racism's grip on Jones and wartime America
- Persuading Readers to Activism: Compares how Himes and Paredes move readers toward action
- Conclusion: Synthesizes both works through conscientization theory
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper draws a sustained, parallel comparison between two distinct literary works—one a realist novel, the other rooted in folklore and ballad—showing how each uses a different narrative mode to expose the same underlying system of racial oppression.
- It grounds literary analysis in historical context, anchoring the texts in wartime America, the Zoot Suit Riots, and Japanese-American internment to demonstrate that the works reflect documented social realities rather than mere fictional conceits.
- The introduction of the concept of "conscientization" in the conclusion gives the paper a theoretical anchor, elevating the discussion from plot summary to critical theory.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates comparative literary analysis by reading two thematically linked but generically distinct texts alongside each other. Rather than treating each book in isolation, it identifies a shared structural argument—that racial violence is systemic and inescapable—and shows how each author reaches that argument through different literary means: realist fiction for Himes and folklore-to-ballad transformation for Paredes.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a contextualizing introduction that situates both works within broader American racial history. The second section deepens the argument by tracing the long-term consequences of structural racism as depicted in Himes's novel. The third section shifts to Paredes, analyzing how ballad and folklore function as vehicles for political persuasion. The conclusion synthesizes both works through the lens of conscientization, arguing that critical awareness is the necessary precondition for meaningful activism.
Introduction: Structural Racism in Two American Stories
Chester Himes and Americo Paredes tell stories that compel readers to be concerned about structural racism in America. Though the settings are circa 1900 and the 1940s, the stranglehold that bigotry has on America—particularly in the South—has not been eliminated. Certainly bigotry, or at least the overt expression of it, has abated somewhat, but one wonders if Himes would still conclude that society is characterized by hypocrisy and contradiction. Racial hatred and racial violence find expression today, just as they did in Los Angeles in the 1940s.
With His Pistol in His Hand by Americo Paredes is a Texan tall tale—and an American true story. The book began as a doctoral dissertation in the Department of English and came to wider fame when a lead story was published in Dallas in 1957 by Mody C. Boatright (ed.) in Chapter II, "The Legend," of Mesquite and Willow. The time is the Texas Revolution, with references extending up through World War II. The place is the Texas–Mexico border. The central problem is the persecution of Mexicans by Anglo-Americans.
Chester Himes's If He Hollers, Let Him Go does not simply begin with Bob Jones building Liberty ships in the shipyards of Los Angeles. Quite obviously, the story has its roots in the antebellum South, from which it was only a short leap to the 1940s. The years before World War II were characterized by a narrowly defined nationalism and deep suspicions of difference—sentiments that nearly kept the United States out of the war altogether, and did so for some time, as Wilson resisted aiding the Europeans. On top of these fears were piled increasing immigration rates and further erosion of domestic homogeneity. The prejudices of white Americans were raw and incendiary. As Bob Jones knew, violence could flare from the embers of bias at any time and in any place.
Arguing the Long-Term Consequences of Racism
In 1942, the forced relocation and internment of Japanese-Americans was testimony to the widespread and irrational distrust of "the other." This was a manifestation of official, systematic, and unjustified racial prejudice. It was a clear demonstration of the stranglehold that racial bias had on the American public—and, worse, on officials in high places who should have known better and done better. When widespread violence erupted against Mexican-American youth in the Zoot Suit Riots in June of 1943, men like Bob Jones recognized that nothing had changed in their move to the North, to the West, or to the coasts. Bigotry followed them like a cloak they could not shake off, remove, or discard.
If He Hollers, Let Him Go is a Bildungsroman gone wrong. Bob Jones starts out at odds with society and ends there—perhaps even in a worse position, because he is constantly in danger of transgressing the rules. Jones does not begin as a misfit, navigate society's hazards, and at last find a place where he is no longer a transgressor. He has no place, no safe home, and he will not find protection from the racial violence that threatens him at every corner in the Los Angeles metropolis—or at least not the protection he sought as part of the American Dream promised by the Golden State. As illustration, when Bob and Alice are stopped and arrested for driving in Santa Monica, the desk sergeant at the police station tells them to "get back where you belong and stay there." The constraints on Bob's freedom and ability to attain any sort of upward mobility are less tangible than those imposed on Japanese-Americans, but they are no less real or frightening.
Because it was wartime—when paranoia can find seemingly sound footing—white Americans conflated the identities of foreign enemies with what they perceived to be enemies within. In this, Himes demonstrated that structural racism draws from a seed of irrationality and penetrates any reasonable barrier erected against it. Given the slightest provocation, racism consumes whatever progress the characters have made. The novel's cast is richly diverse but tragically ensnared by an inherited past. Bob Jones loses everything he has gained when a lower-class white woman he has clashed with—and been attracted to—protects her reputation as a virtuous white woman by accusing him of attempted rape. She later withdraws the charges, preventing even deeper harm, but the outcome is that Jones must move on. Without a job in the shipyards to exempt him from military service, he is drafted into the Army—a microcosm of the very society he has endured and can never truly leave.
Conclusion
Although Cortez discovered the truth about two different sets of laws—one for Anglo-Texans and another for Texas Mexicans—he demonstrated the grit necessary to become a folk hero. The question then becomes whether Cortez could be sufficiently inspiring to motivate others to engage in civil disobedience on behalf of a cause. Just as Americans still celebrate Casey going to bat and Paul Bunyan, voices are raised in cantinas lining both sides of the Rio Grande in praise of the maize farmer who became the renowned sheriff-killer.
Cortez became the most famous border Mexican—through happenstance and misunderstanding rather than through any grand plan to represent his ethnic group as a celebrated victim of structural prejudice. For Jones, this was the antithesis of what he sought. He said, "I didn't want to be the biggest Negro who ever lived, neither Toussaint L'Ouverture nor Walter White. Because deep inside of me, where the white folks couldn't see, it didn't mean a thing."
In With His Pistol in His Hand and If He Hollers, Let Him Go, both protagonists are accused of crimes they did not commit on the basis of their race or ethnicity. When Cortez and Jones protest and attempt to extricate themselves—fleeing, in both instances—matters only become worse. Latent racism comes head to head with the perceived defense of the American way. Only conscientization—a critical theory perspective that allows one to see one's own culture through an objective lens—can promise to inspire action and activism, because structural violence and cultural violence are often imperceptible to those who are privileged within society.
References
Dunn, S. (1960). With his pistol in his hand: A border ballad and its hero. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 63(3), 487–491.
Itagaki, L. M. (2003). Transgressing race and community in Chester Himes's If He Hollers Let Him Go. African-American Review, 37(1).
Himes, C. B. (1945). If he hollers, let him go. New York, NY: Doubleday, Doran and Co.
Mertz, R. J. (1974). No one can arrest me: The story of Gregorio Cortez. Journal of South Texas, 1.
Paredes, A. (1958). With his pistol in his hand: A border ballad and its hero. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
R. E. C. (1946, 2nd Quarter). Race in the rough: If he hollers let him go. Phylon (1946–1956), 7(2), 210–212.
Wright, M. T. (1946, Spring). It can happen anywhere: If he hollers let him go. The Journal of Negro Education, 15(2), 213–214.
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