“Going to Meet the Man” by James Baldwin is nothing short of an American literary enigma. Baldwin demonstrates a profound grasp of prose through the artistic sensibility that he displays throughout the density of the text’s content. While the nature of the motifs presented in the novella are lecherous and discomforting, he responds and conveys them with refined sensibility. Within this specific piece, Baldwin manages to encompass a ubiquity of motifs regarding the history of racial conflict in
the United States that function to explore the intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in civil-rights-era America. Through the third person narration by the main antagonist, Jesse, Baldwin utilizes the story to depict what he believes is the epitome of the white role in racial oppression. He uses formidable imagery and characterization to forge themes of oppression through sexualization and malleability of psychosocial development in youths, all while fostering the overall motif of racism. “Going to Meet the Man” is a bildungsroman that serves to fictionalize the psychological perplexities and internal struggles regarding social acceptance in a time of racial disparity in the United States. Baldwin makes this tastefully effective through the use of intense imagery, and a structure that relies on flashbacks, all functioning to depict the paranoid reflections regarding African Americans in the United States during the mid 1960s.
Set in the 1960s, this story occurs at the peak of the civil rights movement. It saw the success of the desegregation of public facilities, which was the greatest breakthrough in equal-rights legislation for African Americans since the Reconstruction Period from 1865–1877. This victory encouraged the development of militant black activist groups that began to see their struggle for liberation as not only an opportunity to demand civil rights reforms, but also as a chance to confront the enduring economic, political, and cultural consequences of past racial oppression (Carson). As a result, various riots and protests occurred which changed the ambiance within small towns such as the one in “Going to Meet the Man”, as well as struck fear within those that had white supremacist ideals. These groups birthed the fear of reprisal which became a predominant motif that characterized this era. Baldwin effectively portrays this feeling through the intense imagery that serves to characterize Jesse.
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After failing to sexually perform with his wife, Jesse displays great frustration and embarrassment. While he correlates his impotency to exhaustion from the days events, it can be implied from the time period that he is instead, afraid of losing power and control over the African Americans in his community. This is further supported when the sound of tires hit the gravel road and headlights flash through his blinds, and he immediately sits up and reaches for his gun holster on his bedside table.This suggests his fear of being given retribution for his violent crimes against the African Americans in his community and also suggests that he is aware that his actions were wrong.
However, the acknowledgement of this thought irks him and makes him increasingly frustrated and hostile. He demonstrates an internal struggle to violate his psychosocial upbringing which ultimately determines his social acceptance among the white society. Baldwin strengthens this notion by using brash language and imagery in the characterization of Jesse that evoke feelings of discomfort and disgust within the reader. The extreme hostility and language used to depict his frustrations portrays Jesse’s instinctive fear of reprisal by the repressed race that serve to reflect paranoid reflections about African Americans in the United States during the mid 1960s.
The establishment of Jesse’s fear of reprisal is vital in setting the foundation for the rest of the story because it provides reasoning as to why Baldwin utilizes flashback throughout the rest of the story. This fear causes Jesse to demonstrate an internal struggle to violate his psychosocial upbringing that makes him increasingly frustrated and hostile, where he is eventually led to remedy his “silent, angry, helplessness” through the recollection of his past of repetitive sexualized violence (2512). By shifting into the past Baldwin allows Jesse to revert to carnal feelings that bring him comfort and gratification. This phenomenon is referred to in Sigmund Freud’s scientific novel “Uncanny”.
In it he provides reasoning to explain why Jesse reverts to memories from his past in order to assuage his irritation. According to Freud, impotence “will conceivably strengthen the inclination to linger at the preparatory acts and to form them into new sexual aims which may take the place of the normal”(Freud). This is evident in Jesse’s remembrance of his encounter with the young protester, where he reminisces, “he was lying on the ground jerking and moaning… I put the prod to him and he jerked some more and he kind of screamed”(2513). His memory of the event serves as an analogy to the act of sexual intercourse, further asserting Jesse’s deeply rooted psychosexual perversion and gratification through sexual oppression as discussed by Freud.
Despite the horrific thrashing and pain of the victim, the image brings Jesse a feeling of intense sexual pleasure. Baldwin uses such intense imagery in order to hyperbolize the theme of racial oppression through sexualization. He fictionalizes the psychological perplexities and internal struggles regarding social acceptance in a time of racial disparity in the United States. By doing this, he is able to reflect the paranoid reflections regarding African Americans in the United States during the mid 1960s as well as depict what he believes is the epitome of the white role in racial oppression.
Furthermore, in the same scene, Baldwin equates sex with Jesse’s assertion of power and masculinity over the African American victim when he shifts the narrative back to the present and Jesse realizes that the memory made him, “hurt all over with a peculiar excitement which refused to be released’ (2514). By noting the familiarity of the excitement he feels despite not being able to pinpoint why, Baldwin implies that influences and events early in Jesse’s psychosocial development functioned to permanently define his perception of morality. Also discussed in “Uncanny’ by Sigmund Freud, this feeling experienced by Jesse is itself referred to as “The Uncanny”.
The disturbing gratification Jesse’s gets from his recollection of horrific acts resembles the idea of the ‘uncanny’ that, according to Freud, “can emerge in the effect of an emotional impulse” that transforms “if it is repressed, into anxiety”, and “the frightening element can be shown to be something repressed which recurs” (Freud). This provides evidence that Jesse’s hypersexualization of the African American race is deeply rooted within his being, alluding to his childhood transformation from innocence to stereotypical southern bigot per his societies racist influences. His memories from childhood, albeit apparently repressed, are pivotal. It describes his loss of innocence, and well as depicts a rite of passage that forged these perverted feelings he has. It can be implied that Baldwin characterizes Jesse this way in order to portray the white role in racial oppression as being the repetitive cycle of twisted family values and societal expectations asserted at youth.
The gratification brought on by the memory of the assault on the young black protester, or “Uncanny” not only demonstrates Jesse’s deeply rooted psychosocial connection between African Americans and sexual violence, but it also serves as Jesse’s indirect expression of a racialized, protective motive to establish his role as the dominant male protector. In her essay “White Men as Performers in the Lynching Ritual”, Trudier Harris writes, “The white male’s function, ostensibly, was to protect his home and especially the white woman…The white man’s craving for power and mastery are indications of his ultimate superiority not only in assigning a place to his woman, but especially in keeping black people, particularly black men, in the place he had assigned for them.” While Jesse’s violent sexualized assault on the black protester functioned as a means to achieve sexual gratification, it also served as a means for him to carry out what he believed was his inherent duty as a white male.
Jesse describes himself as “a good man, a God-fearing man” who had “tried to do his duty all his life, and he had been a deputy sheriff for several years’ (2512). This description of himself alone can be used as a motive behind the pious fervor with which he abused the protestor. In his eyes, he was providing protection not only to his community, but to his masculinity and white superiority. Baldwin utilizes Jesse’s character as a means to portray the hypersexualization and oppression of the African American male by whites by equating Jesse’s own sense appropriated stature with sexual arousal and supremacy. Through this, he drives the motif of the white perception of being rightful protectors and guardians of what they consider the “civilized world” which was a dominant feeling among white men in civil-rights-era America.
When it comes to James Baldwin’s piece, “Going to Meet the Man”, as a whole it serves to fictionalize the psychological perplexities and internal struggles regarding social acceptance in a time of racial disparity in the United States. When discussed in light of the non-fiction works by both Sigmund Freud and Trudier Harris, a context is provided that depicts the paranoid reflections regarding African Americans in the United States during the mid 1960s.
Baldwin makes this effective through intense imagery and overall structure of the story which relies on flashbacks to reveal the motif of racism. As a result, this story functions as an implicit rhetorical discussion of the racist tones and feelings that epitomize the 1960s in America.
