Stranger in the Village

James Baldwin wrote this essay around the time that Ralph Ellison grappled with similar content in his novel, Invisible Man. They are both concerned with the competing senses of whiteness and blackness, and particularly with the black man's suggested behavior towards white men in a time when there was slight obligation to prove themselves to be civil and agreeable. Ellison writes, "Overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you til they vomit or bust wide open." He installs this mindset in his narrator for a decent chunk of the novel, and it is later tested by a number of contending ideals. Baldwin writes, "This smile-and-the-world-smiles-with-you routine worked as will in this situation as it had in the situation for which it was designed, which is to say it did not work at all." (160). It's curious that, for the non-fiction writer like Baldwin, it's not so easy to hide these incredibly fragile sentiments behind dialogue or contrived circumstances. Baldwin can use only what his experience/observations offer him, and with that, his approach contrarily uses a more philosophical tone in the thick of the essay to argue what he figures to be at the core of these racial disputes: America's unyielding (and at times self-deprecating) concern with the race problem . This is mixed in with anecdotal moments (without them, this essay would be maybe 70% less effective) that show a clearer context than the other historical circumstances mentioned within. Despite the rich language and personal manner through which he presents his arguments, the piece is essentially a case study, and yet the case is presented at first as something to hook us with imagery, and later is juxtaposed with with bizarre treatment of blacks in America. One of the difficulties of this essay has to do with the philosophical/anthropological approach's occasional lack of precision. I trust Baldwin's claims, but the lack of specificity in places might weaken his argument for those who'd beg to differ.

The most enticing thing about Baldwin's writing is his heavy sentence management. With that, it looks as though each sentence is tightly packed, could stand on its own, or has enough content and inherent meaning to serve as a "topic sentence" of sorts. There's something about these loaded, suspensive sentences that offer a sense of diplomacy, and at times take the tone of the inaugural addresses we looked at. The proof is in the chiasmus: "People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them." We know exactly what he means, based on the evidence he supplied before that statement, but he's managed to put a lid on--or categorize--the particular feeling (like Joyce describes) of an inescapable history (161). His ability to pinpoint immense historical abstracts, or even feelings that people have, is remarkable. The sentences are handled with care and sensitivity towards his argument, and also with a self-conscious ear towards his own sophisticated language and content.

Similarly, he writes, "I tried not to think of these so lately baptized kinsmen, of the price paid for them, or the peculiar price they themselves would pay, and said nothing about my father, who having taken his own conversion too literally never, at the bottom, forgave the white world (which he described as heathen) for having saddled him with a Christ in whom, to judge at least from their treatment of him, they themselves no longer believed." (161) This is one of many, many sentences in which Baldwin takes his sweet suspensive time laying out the facts that are not to be missed or saved for the next sentence. It's exhaustive, but seemingly necessary for him to tie in his father's experience with conversion in the very same sentence that discusses him digesting the notion of paid religious conversion--a concept his father knew something about, and with that, manages to explain how his father was tied to a cause that people no longer believed in. Throughout the whole, Baldwin has an arsenal of these incredibly thick, argumentative sentences that are chock full of details that support his claim, all within a single breath, as if there's no time to waste on the matter.

I couldn't determine whether or not, throughout the entire course of the essay, he has maintained the same tone, or even what exactly the tone is. Is it strictly philosophical or contemplative? Angry and bitter? Pained and sentimental? It reads like a weird amalgamation of them all.