James Baldwin's Going To Meet The Man

Literature without Binds Although there has never been a set way for literature to be created, writings in America could be described as very cookie cutter up until the mid twentieth century. There was very little experimentation with form or content. Authors only felt like certain aspects of literature would be accepted, so they filtered their work making the writing simplistic. No one was willing to challenge these unwritten rules that bound writers to conservative ties, until the World Wars. Once the twentieth century took off, long gone was the mold that dictated how an author could illustrate his ideas. This new generation that was produced by the wars was something that American had never seen before. After World War II America had this …show more content…
He was an honest man who was not afraid to make his voice heard, as he fought through literature for equal rights and opportunities for African Americans. He was well aware of a man’s full worth regardless of their skin color, and he was persistent on making it clear to his readers that black people were not only getting an unequal shake, but were also being beaten in mentally and physically in the process. As an African American opposing the white majority, Baldwin’s writings would never have been socially accepted in the 1800s, his writing style in “Going to Meet the Man” would have never even been considered to be published just for its profanity and sexual content alone. The subject, a sheriff of a small southern town, cant stop thinking about his experiences with African Americans, either through sexual or violent encounters. Although the racism proposed in this work is awful, it may have been accepted pre World Wars. However, the description of the sexual scenes in the story would have been unheard of in the conservative literature of old. Baldwin goes into detail vivid detail as this long sex scene plays out overnight between the sheriff and his wife (Baldwin 424). As the story progresses, the reader realizes that a key to the sheriff’s sex drive is the way that he abuses African Americans, (435) which leads to even more sex with his wife (436). In addition to the sexual content, the theme of this prose would have never been conceived as an idea in the 19th century. The theme in question, is that racism is something that is taught by those around them,and, if not stopped, can become a never ending cycle. This point is made clear as the sheriff recollects to his childhood when he had a black friend. As he recalls, his parents took him to a lynching to instill in him that his friend was not equal (434). This type of challenge to