Go Tell It on the Mountain

Go Tell It on the Mountain Summary | Part 1: The Seventh Day Summary

James Baldwin's Go Tell It on The Mountain is the story of a young man coming of age under very difficult circumstances and little guidance. Through the course of the story, he will go from a boy hobbled by the destructive behavior of a dysfunctional family to one that has begun to break free and make meaningful emotional ties outside the constraints of his family. Part I is told from the point of view of the main character John, a boy whose 14^th birthday marks a turning point in his life.

The setting for the story is the borough of Harlem in New York City during the mid-1930s. The boy, John, has had an upbringing of the strictest sort focused mainly on the church and religious life. In contrast, the backdrop for his family's small zealous church and derelict apartment is a neighborhood filled with hard-drinking, fast-living men and women, who the people of his church hold in harsh contempt. The story begins on a Sunday morning with John's apparently pious family dutifully walking to church. As they pass through the Harlem streets, they witness the remnants of the night before: stragglers from Saturday night carousing, bleary-eyed drunken men, and women staggering home clothed in "tight bright dresses". Any doubts that John harbors about his religion are kept to himself and outwardly, he appears to be one of the "faithful". In fact, everyone in John's circle expects that he will one day become a preacher like his father.

John's life is dominated by his father, Gabriel, who is a brutal, angry man who rules his family through fear. Gabriel is a deacon at their evangelical Baptist church, the Temple of the Fire Baptized. It is because of the strict surroundings fostered by Gabriel that John is taught to see the things that go on around him in black and white, either good or evil: there is no acknowledgement of vagaries or moderation. This sentiment is summed up by a church member when she exclaims, "Ain't no such thing as a little fault or a big fault. Satan get his foot in the door, he ain't going to rest till he's in the room." As a result, the children are denied the innocent pleasures of youth such as dances, movies and frolics with their schoolmates. Because such activities are private and not dominated by the church's presence, they are considered as having the potential to lead them down the path to destruction. John's father violently enforces strict adherence to the church's preeminence in every aspect of the family's lives; any action that he interprets as straying from the path of Godliness, or as questioning his moral authority is harshly squelched with blows.

John knows that his father had had another life down South that he never discusses with the family and remains a mystery to him and his siblings. During his life in the South Gabriel had once been a pastor of his own church and had another wife, Deborah, who had died. John wonders whether his father might have been different in those days, why he came North and what had passed between his father and his former wife. Perhaps his father's past holds the key to the reasons why he is now so harsh and angry. John senses his father's resentment of his current job as a factory worker and wonders if he longs to lead his own congregation again but cannot because of his obligations to his family.

John's mother is also something of a mystery to him. He searches her face and her words for clues as to how she really feels about his father and whether she really loves him. Although she never gives away any unmistakable sign of dissent, he senses that she is an unwilling partner in the children's violently unyielding upbringing. He knows that his father uses the same threatening anger to control her that he uses to control the children. In one instance, in bright sunlight that filters in the kitchen, she looks like a stranger to him. The light reveals the lines carved in her face by the stress of trying to protect her children from their father: a tight mouth, a forehead wrinkled by knit brows and creases at the sides of her eyes. Yet when the sun goes behind the clouds, her face resembles one he had seen in an old photograph, before she married his father: happy, sweet and confident. Because of the transformation, his mother has gone through over years of living with his father, its mysterious origins and her unwillingness to offer any explanation, John both pities and hates his mother.

John is the eldest, with the next in line being his brother Roy. The two boys have very different characters. John is shy and quiet and outwardly, he is docile and obedient, though inwardly he is angry and defiant towards his abusive father and the rules he is forced to live by. Roy on the other hand is brash and rebellious. Their differences are highlighted when, peeping through a basement window, John and Roy secretly observe two neighborhood "sinners" having sex standing up. John turns away while Roy keeps watching and even returns to the window later to watch repeatedly. Roy also brags about what he does with the girls down the street, knowing that his older brother would not dare play such sexual games. Their parents have a hard time making Roy attend Sundays at the Temple of the Fire Baptized; and his mother is unable to keep him under control at home while his father is away at work. Roy is often told that if he does not change his ways he will end up in jail, or worse Hell. In contrast, "Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up" and though John feels quiet contempt for the church, the people of the congregation (the saints) believe that one day John will be "saved". Despite these differences in their character, Roy is inexplicably the father's favorite while John feels that no matter how hard he tries he does not know how to gain his father's approval.

There are two sisters, a younger one named Sarah and the baby Ruth. Sarah is mildly annoying in her rigid adherence to her father's rules and appears to be something of a sentry for him while he is away at work at the factory. Thus, Sarah's presence gives the family no real respite from the father's constant harsh surveillance. Ruth is yet a baby and we find that John's mother is pregnant again with another child. All of these children are the mother's responsibility to watch, feed and keep clean, a burden that weighs heavily on her thin shoulders.

The final member of the family is Aunt Florence, Gabriel's older sister. She is a strong, proud woman who is the only one with the courage to stand up to Gabriel. Aunt Florence does not make much of an effort to hide her disgust at the way her brother is rearing his family and she tells him what is on her mind often. Florence has no great respect for the place the church holds in Gabriel's home; in fact, she regards it with disdain. John understands that Florence remembers his father's life before he came North and that this gives her a unique power over him that none of the rest of them share. Although she could answer many of the questions that John has about his father's past, he never dares to ask her about it.

Another important character in the book is Brother Elisha, a young man from Georgia. Elisha is the charismatic teacher of John's Sunday school class and nephew of the pastor Father James. John is enamored with Elisha; and although he does not listen to the words of Elisha's Sunday school teachings, Elisha mesmerizes John during the class. Though Elisha is only seventeen he has already become a preacher at the Church and leads the congregation and "the saints" in songs and dances where they are overcome with religious fervor shouting out, falling to the floor and thrashing about. These loud showy displays frighten John, but at the same time impress upon him that the feeling of God's presence, though lacking in him, is very intense to others. Elisha is gifted in his ability to stir the congregation into these religious frenzies, which gives him a special place in the church hierarchy.

This honored position that Elisha holds is dampened one day when his uncle, pastor Father James, vilifies him in front of the congregation for being in danger of committing a great sin. Elisha's great sin is simply his youthful relationship with Sister Ella Mae, consisting of innocent things like after school walks and trips to the beach. However, this blossoming romantic relationship is seen by Father James as dangerous and is cut off through the public humiliation of the two. Watching this John realizes the complete control that the church has on the lives of the faithful, none allowed a personal life apart from the church.

John yearns to escape from this permeating stranglehold on his life but is afraid to do so in an obvious way; so he tries to set himself apart in any quiet way that he can. He excels in school, having been noticed by the teachers as promising student, who could lead "his people" and do great things. John takes inward pride at his status at school, but not because he could be a leader of "his people", a thing he has absolutely no interest in doing. Rather, his accomplishments at school hint to him that he might find, in his own separate abilities, an escape from his father's world. He takes particular pride in knowing that the white principal once singled him out as being especially talented. (Placing significance on the opinions of white people is in stark contrast to his father's vituperative damnation of all white people as evil and his insistence that no white person would ever do anything good for a black person.) John draws great strength from his private identity as intellectually gifted. He sees himself as having a potential that the others around him lack, giving him reason to think he can escape their fate and find a life rich in the things he has been denied in his father's house. His private pride enables him to withstand the brutality of his father's beatings, and gives him the strength to quietly defy the church's teachings until one day his confidence is shaken. That day is the day of his fourteenth birthday. The author describes this change when he writes, "John's secret heart had flourished in its wickedness until the day his sin first overtook him".

On his birthday he wakes up and looks at a yellow stain on the ceiling above his head, feeling gripped by guilt and shame over a sin committed the day before. He has masturbated in the bathroom at school. To make matters worse, his older male classmates were the objects of his sexual fantasies. So not only is his sin of the worst kind- sexual, it is in an unspeakable from- homosexual. This experience is one that he cannot shake off and begins to erode his feeling of superiority that had given him the strength to inwardly defy his father.

In his shame, he leaves his bedroom to join his family in the kitchen, hoping that his birthday will be forgotten; initially is seems that it will be. He enters the kitchen where his mother and Roy are busy fighting about his father. Roy is bitterly complaining about the beatings and overbearing rules his father gives the family. All the while, their mother is angrily defending these things as evidence that his father loves them and only tries to protect and care for the family. In a passage that foreshadows two stabbing events we will learn of later, their mother tells Roy he should be more careful about his own rebellious conduct before "somebody puts a knife in you." The argument between Roy and his mother weighs on John's already unhappy spirit. Instead of being wished a happy birthday, John is teased by his brother and then tersely sent to clean the parlor in preparation for Sunday morning by his mother. There John fights a losing battle against copious dust and filth. He tries to sweep the dirty worn rug and polish the family's spare belongings but the dirt is so stubborn and his efforts seem not to make any difference. The depressing, dirty parlor is not a very convincing argument for the father's great success at caring for the family; John feels defeated.

Once finished with the cleaning John's mother calls him to her, surprising him with a gift of money for his birthday. The rare possession of a small sum gives him a transitory feeling of possibility and freedom. In a minor act of defiance, he crosses Central Park, which takes him from poor Harlem to the wealthy white neighborhoods of Manhattan. There he wants to spend his money among people his father regards as sinners- white people. He is drawn to explore these neighborhoods of possibility, but as he walks through the streets of the white neighborhoods, he feels uncomfortable and alien. Then he goes to the movies, something that he is forbidden to do by his father and the church. The movie he sees is Of Human Bondage, a story about the destructive relationship between an upper class doctor and his malicious lower class girlfriend. Watching the movie, he takes the side of the mean-spirited prostitute who psychologically torments her weak, disabled, upper class lover. At the end of the movie when the cruel woman succumbs to tuberculosis and dies, John is stunned to see the lessons of his father played out even in the "wicked" cinema. Since he had empathized with the bad character, John leaves the show more convinced of his own evil proclivity. His secret pleasure of going to the movies on his birthday becomes a sour experience.

When he returns home he sees a trail of blood leading up the stairs to the apartment where he finds his brother Roy lying on the couch. Roy is surrounded by the whole family, including their aunt Florence. John learns that Roy has been slashed in the face with a knife in a fight with some white boys. When John sees Roy up close he is relieved because he understands that although Roy is badly hurt, he will not die. Yet, his relief is cut short when Gabriel begins blaming Roy's injury on their mother's neglect, demanding to know why she lets Roy go out carousing. Florence then defends their mother's innocence and begins to bitterly criticize Gabriel for the way he is raising the children. In the horrible fight that follows Gabriel ends up striking his wife in the face with full force, knocking her down into Aunt Florence's arms. At this, Roy threatens his father if he ever strikes her again, calling him a bastard. This defiance brings a blind rage into Gabriel and he removes his belt and, muttering "my Lord, my Lord" under his breath, repeatedly whips the injured boy with all of his strength. It is not until Aunt Florence grabs the belt away that the whipping stops. His mother then picks up Roy, who is in anguish, off of the floor.

Despite this horrendous experience at home, that night John goes on to church as planned to prepare for a Saturday night "Tarry service". He is supposed to clean the dirty church, a job reminiscent of cleaning his family's hopelessly dilapidated parlor. Since Elisha is at the church preparing for the service too, the banter between the two is uncharacteristically light. Elisha and John start horsing around and get in a friendly wrestling match, which John perhaps enjoys a bit too much. After they finish cleaning the church, Elisha questions John about when he will be ready to be saved. He explains how his devotion to the church has brought him great joy. John listens but does not feel swayed.

Later people filter in for the service. As usual, the crowd is thin, consisting of two older, peevishly pious women, Sisters MacCandless and Price. When they surmise that no one else is coming they begin the service with singing. It is during the songs that John's mother and father enter the church accompanied by his Aunt Florence. John is shocked to see Florence with them as she has always regarded their church with disdain and they had just had the huge row at home. Not only is Florence there, but also she comes in an ominously quiet way. John understands that her presence there has great significance, and that only some horrible, desperate yearning could ever persuade Florence to come to this church to pray.