“There are tales that are remembered and tales that are forgotten,
but all tales are born to be told. They demand it; the dead become tales in
order to live. Their eternal life is in your mouth” (305).
Allmon was born to tell a tale. At the end of the second
interlude, C.E Morgan writes, “And now the boy, as dark as his father is light,
gazes down at the city and its brown river that seems far too wide and far too
deep to be swum but, oh children, it was swum” (189). The prescience in the
speaker’s tone makes Allmon’s tale feel both predestined and obviously repetitive
of a life lived not too long ago. It is as if the speaker knows he is doomed
from the start.
After his grandfather, the Reverend, died, his sermons would
reveal themselves in dreams. His sermons often spoke out against contempt and
reminded people of the bills that black people still have to pay to right history’s
wrongs. In the Reverends mind, they all owed their black ancestors justice; to
die a negro meant to sacrifice for them. One Sunday, when he asked church
members to amend the unpaid dues many of them had chosen to forget, he told them,
“You’re gonna say: If Jesus wasn’t born no negro, he died a negro. What part of
the cross don’t you understand” (220)! Jesus sacrificed himself to save others from
sin, and that sacrifice is what made him a negro. It was up to them, the congregation,
to repay that bill in justice, as well as the many other familial bills that
followed.
Even after hearing the Reverend’s warnings, Allmon spent his
whole life feeling lost and at the mercy of his circumstances. While it may
have been true that he had little opportunity to succeed, he let others
determine his worth and succumbed to the wealthy white men of the south. He
made himself a pawn, rather than a player, and after the death of his mother,
he was so scared of falling victim to the same fate that he left Cincinnati. Years
before he crossed the river, the Reverend came to Allmon in a dream. “’Stop!’
the Reverend said, and the stars stilled about his head, hovering. He pointed a
gnarled finger at Allmon. ‘Don’t you step across this line, boy! This line got
drawn for you, and only the Lord can take it away’” (280)! Many years passed from
the time of the dream to the time he crossed the river, but the warning loomed
as he travelled in the bus to Kentucky. He would drift in and out of sleep to
his mother’s voice asking “Allmon, what have you done? It’s like she knows you
left the old telescope in the house on purpose. Only an idiot would do that, or
someone intentionally trying to get lost” (285). The truth was that Allmon was
already lost and even more resentful. He would tend to Hellsmouth as a way of
getting the life he deserved, but the horse merely acted as a distraction. He
asked himself, “…Is this really what you want? To crouch in the shadow of that
tree and divvy up her earthly possessions: her bridle, saddle, her blanket, and
her whale’s heart? Is this really what you want” (464)?
It took Allmon losing everything, including his only son, to
demand his soul and worth from Henry Forge. However, rage and needless want disguised
itself as destiny and only caused him more pain. Henrietta died without
teaching him how to love. In his guilt, he realized that “He had used her like
meat and then left her to rot” (506). The cry that Henry let out for Samuel as Allmon
tried to take his son back felt foreign, “The wail rises and encircles the farm,
it grips Allmon’s head round. It travels through the rolling pastures, wends
through boughs of trees, swings over old graves and the heads of the dark,
startled horses. But Allmon has lived for so long, for more than six lifetimes,
he thinks he can move steadily through it” (537). In the middle of the fire, his
feet become heavy with dread. He knows that he could never feel a love like
that again. He remembered the Reverend’s warning in his dreams, “A pinprick
pierced the skin of Allmon’s mind. The Reverend was right; I should have never
crossed that river” (513). As rage made way for clear thoughts, he realized his
destiny was to make his mother, grandfather, himself, and everyone before them
heard. He put his son down, called to God and said, “I am a sinner. I broke
love and sold my child to the highest bidder, but I will ransom his life and his
son’s life with my own. Reverend, lay me down gently. Please ask Momma to
forgive me. I forgive her. Dress my body in Sunday clothes and anoint my mouth.
Let my life speak, then they will finally know me. I am not afraid any longer”
(540). As soon as he fell, Hellsmouth came into view. The horse that may have
known Allmon’s tale from start to finish symbolically “…sank into her haunches
and reared, her legs cycling as if to turn the very wheel of the sky. She was
almost perfect. She was ready for more” (540). Hellsmouth was Allmon’s serpent,
guiding him down a path of sin but also of revelation. She was the gatekeeper to
both heaven and hell, and she ensured that Allmon’s tale was seen to its end.
The argument that Allmon “made himself a pawn, rather than a player” because he was convinced that he lacked control certainly has its strengths. I agree that he does have control over his own life and therefore some of the responsibility for its outcome must be his; however, I think the only opportunities he has to change his life’s trajectory would mean giving up who he is and abandoning his roots. For example, the reason he never takes the admissions test that might have been his ticket out is that the night before, he thinks of the white kids in the neighborhood where he would go to school, with “their fucking bullshit easy lives. Why would he want to go to their rich kid school? He thought of his mother....of his father” (261). He feels that he would be renouncing the culture and people with which he grew up, and it is this emotional conflict that leads him to drink so much that he misses the test. Another possible escape from his circumstances is after his mother’s funeral, when his distant relative Sophia offers to take him in and help him get back on his feet. However, he feels that this would further break the connection with the mother he’s just lost, thinking “No. No, this doesn’t look like my room. Where did my city go? Where is my mother? My mother is my city” (285), and when he leaves, it is in the hope of finding his father and clinging to the last piece of his heritage. In other words, staying with Sophia and escaping his circumstances would require sacrificing a huge part of who he is, so he could only escape by becoming somebody else.
ReplyDeleteThe type of white person which The Reverend describes Abraham Lincoln and JFK to be in his sermon seems to be a much more dramatic version of the “white friend who gets it,” described by Ifemelu in Americanah (Morgan 219). Somewhere along this spectrum of white liberals is where Henrietta seems to believe that she falls.
ReplyDeleteIn opposition to the racist ways of her father, Henrietta combats these ideas through scientific evidence within her notebooks, which provide a gateway into her thought process for both the reader and eventually Henry. In essence, Henrietta seems to see herself as a “white friend who gets it.”
Perceiving her actions through Allmon’s perspective, however, reveals that Henrietta does not “get it” as much as she wishes to believe. An observation of Henrietta’s interactions with Allmon prove that her attitude towards black people is largely a rebellion against her father, rather than true and genuine interest in the wellbeing of African Americans. This is revealed through minor interactions such as Henrietta’s pestering of Allmon to tell her the details of his difficult life when he is clearly unwilling to speak of it (346), as well as more dramatic and explicit exhibitions of her privileged upbringing, such as her insensitively telling Allmon “‘I’m sorry, but if you don’t look white, you’re not white. At least not in the real fucking world” (332).
Henrietta’s poor execution of her allegedly progressive ways serve as a way in which she tries to rebel against her father but is not entirely successful. This is yet another element of the novel that ties back to the most significant concept that it is communicating: you can only run so far from your father.