Two more stories

Last evening we had our second session of the Swarthmore course on Short Stories taught by Phil Schmidt. The two stories we studied were Eudora Welty, Where Does the Voice Come From? and James Baldwin, Going to Meet the Man. Both stories deal in a profound way with the issue of racism in our society. Welty, a resident of Jackson, Mississippi, wrote her story the day after Medgar Evers was murdered at his home in Jackson. It was not known, when she wrote the story, who had killed Evers, but she attempts to get inside the skin of the murderer, whom she assumed to be a local white supremacist, and tell the story of the murder from his perspective. This was a daring thing to do, but she was so successful in it that some of her details were too close for comfort after the murderer was identified. In his story, Baldwin also attempts to get inside the skin of a white supremacist, Jesse, who is a deputy sheriff in a small Mississippi town. The story takes place in the 1960s, when Jesse is dealing with black activists in the Civil Rights movement, but it includes flashbacks, in particular one in which Jesse is ten years old and is taken by his parents to see the lynching and castration of a black man, an experience whih has a profound affect on the boy. It can be said, I think, that both writers are brilliant in the depiction of their protagonists. Phil Schmidt highlighted a quotation from Baldwin which is very pertinent to his story: "We know, in the case of the person, that whoever cannot tell himself the truth about his past is trapped in it, is immobilized in the prison of his undiscovered self. This is also true of nations. We know how a person, in such a paralysis, is unable to assess either his weaknesses or his strengths, and how frequently indeed he mistakes one for the other." Jesse is "trapped in the prison of his undiscovered self." As a boy, he had a black friend, Otis, who he notes, in the flashback mentioned above, is not at the lynching. Indeed, no blacks are anywhere to be seen that day, even in their own neighborhoods. Jesse does not explore why that is so, but totally buys into the "initiation into manhood" his father has staged by taking him to the lynching and placing him on his shoulders so he can get a better view. His life and racial attitudes could have taken a different route, but he does not know that and is locked into a white supremecist narrative. Thus, in a way, Baldwin makes him a tragic figure, and Baldwin took heat for that from people like Eldridge Cleaver. I'll have more to say about this later.

Eudora WElty, (1909-2001)

James Baldwin (1924-1987)