James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain is a work concerned with the notion of change. Centered on a Harlem-based Pentecostal church, Baldwin unpacks multiple character studies to explore whether or not true growth and change are attainable. Through flashbacks, Baldwin reveals the main characters’ actions are merely products of their respective pasts. That is, these characters are shown to suggest an overarching sense of determinism plagues humanity—a determinism in which all actions can be traced to a cause and effect, where all causes are the effects of previous causes. To put it simply, lives are predetermined by the circumstances around them in both the past and at present. However, the character John presents a different narrative.
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Perhaps this is the reason much of the novel, the lengthy part two, is structured around heartbreaking flashbacks of Florence, Gabriel, and Elizabeth’s respective lives. The flashbacks clarify their motivations in the present and subtly communicate that they cannot escape acting in response to their past circumstances. That being said, Elizabeth not so subtly asks Florence at one point, “Don’t you think…that the Lord can change a person’s heart?” (Baldwin 213). Elizabeth hints at the ultimate conclusion of the novel—divine intervention can change a person’s heart—but Florence’s response grounds the novel back in its deterministic sentiments for the time being: “I done heard it [that the Lord can change a person’s heart] said often enough…but I got yet to see it” (Baldwin …show more content…
Aunt Florence muses to her brother Gabriel, “You was born wild, and you’s going to die wild…You can’t change nothing, Gabriel. You ought to know that by now” (Baldwin 50). If the novel were to end on that point, it would be a somber read. However, Baldwin affirms that not everyone is devoid of agency. God can and does change a course of life predetermined by past experiences. John, as a bildungsroman, comes-of-age in the end through a genuine conversion that trumps determinism. God’s intervention brings him to maturity—brings him into a new life where the past can be the
Perhaps this is the reason much of the novel, the lengthy part two, is structured around heartbreaking flashbacks of Florence, Gabriel, and Elizabeth’s respective lives. The flashbacks clarify their motivations in the present and subtly communicate that they cannot escape acting in response to their past circumstances. That being said, Elizabeth not so subtly asks Florence at one point, “Don’t you think…that the Lord can change a person’s heart?” (Baldwin 213). Elizabeth hints at the ultimate conclusion of the novel—divine intervention can change a person’s heart—but Florence’s response grounds the novel back in its deterministic sentiments for the time being: “I done heard it [that the Lord can change a person’s heart] said often enough…but I got yet to see it” (Baldwin …show more content…
Aunt Florence muses to her brother Gabriel, “You was born wild, and you’s going to die wild…You can’t change nothing, Gabriel. You ought to know that by now” (Baldwin 50). If the novel were to end on that point, it would be a somber read. However, Baldwin affirms that not everyone is devoid of agency. God can and does change a course of life predetermined by past experiences. John, as a bildungsroman, comes-of-age in the end through a genuine conversion that trumps determinism. God’s intervention brings him to maturity—brings him into a new life where the past can be the