Critical Analysis of Joe Turner’s "Come And Gone"

Texte Universitaire , 2006 , 11 Pages , Note: A

Philologie Anglaise - Autres

This paper is a critical analysis of Joe Turner’s "Come And Gone".

A vision-haunted father and his 11-year-old daughter stop at a boarding house in Pittsburgh on their quest for the mother who had wandered off after her husband had been confined by the mysterious Joe Turner for seven years. The theme of the play is the transformative experience, cleansing, and rebirth of the character of Loomis, a man on a quest, and thus, the emergence of the “shiny man.” This revelation ends the quest of another character, the conjure man Bynum, who has been looking for his messiah, this very “shiny man.”

In a boarding house, where everyone comes and goes (“They the only ones live here now. People come and go.” [Bertha to Loomis], a family is reunited by two forces (an African magician, and a realistic “scout” or “people finder,” both roomers at the place), only to split up again – for the man emerges reborn, becomes independent, and leaves mother and daughter.

1. Title of Text and Author

August Wilson, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1986)

2. Cast of Key Characters

Seth Holly

Bynum Walker

Herald Loomis

Bertha Holly

Rutherford Selig

Jeremy Furlow

Zonia Loomis

Mattie Campbell

Reuben Mercer

Molly Cunningham

Martha Pentecost

3. Setting

The time is August, 1911, and the action takes place in a boarding house in Pittsburgh.

4. Plotline

A vision-haunted father and his 11-year-old daughter stop at a boarding house in Pittsburgh on their quest for the mother who had wandered off after her husband had been confined by the mysterious Joe Turner¹ for seven years. At their hotel, they get to know an African voodoo priest who works on reuniting mother and daughter spiritually, and they meet a “people finder” who eventually brings the lost mother into the house.

5. Theme: “I’m standing. My legs stood up! (…) I’m standing now!” (134) [Loomis to Martha, revealing his blood-smeared chest, before leaving her]

The theme of the play is the transformative experience, cleansing, and rebirth of the character of Loomis, a man on a quest, and thus, the emergence of the “shiny man.” This revelation ends the quest of another character, the conjure man Bynum, who has been looking for his messiah, this very “shiny man.”

In a boarding house, where everyone comes and goes (“They the only ones live here now. People come and go.” (33) [Bertha to Loomis], a family is reunited by two forces (an African magician, and a realistic “scout” or “people finder,” both roomers at the place), only to split up again – for the man emerges reborn, becomes independent, and leaves mother and daughter.

Central to Joe Turner’s Come and Gone are elements of memory and desire, both in terms of characters who are seeking to reorient themselves and in terms of August Wilson’s self-described project of creating a body of plays that will help African (US) Americans more fully embrace the African side of their ‘double consciousness’ (…). Set in 1911 during the Great Migration when hundreds of thousands of African Americans left the rural south to settle in northern, industrial centers, the play dramatizes the various wanderings of a group of African Americans in search of a place where they can feel at home in the world (…).

Memory takes many forms: the story of a ‘shiny man’ – suggestive of the Yoruba gods Ogun and Esu – who encourages fellow travelers to claim their predestined ‘song’ in life; roots working and juba dancing, or African spiritual practices adapted to the ecology of the United States; and a temporal sensibility that simultaneously looks back to the Middle Passage and forward to Africa. (Richards, 1999, 92-105)

Historical facts are interwoven by means of the figure of Joe Turner, a white man headhunting for blacks as workforce (see footnote 1). Martha was one of the wives missing their husbands who came too late: “Herald, I didn’t know if you was ever coming back. They told me Joe Turner had you and my whole world split half in two.” (128) [Martha to Loomis] The brother of the governor of Tennessee had already lured her husband into bondage to work for him on a farm: “Joe Turner split us up. Joe Turner turned the world upside down. He bound me on to him for seven years.” (114) [Loomis to Mattie, explaining how he lost his wife] After this revelation, the audience understands why Loomis gets so furious about Bynum singing the “grand-daddy of the blues” (see appendix 1) “Joe Turner’s come and gone” (p. 104).

The desperate wife decided her husband was dead and resolved not to carry a ghost around with her: “So I killed you in my heart. I buried you. I mourned you.” (129) And she left her little daughter with her mother, to make sure she was in safety, while she set out North where her reverend was moving the church.

Astonishingly, Loomis, once he has found her wife, has no desire to start a new life with her and their daughter; he wants to be by himself and live independently (probably with Mattie): “Joe Turner let me loose and I felt all turned around inside. I just wanted to see your face to know that the world was still there. Make sure everything still in its place so I could reconnect myself together.” (128) Thus, when the husband sees his wife again, he finds his true self and his place in the world, and is ready to part with her forever: “I just been waiting to look on your face to say my goodbye. That goodbye got so big at times, seem like it was gonna swallow me up. (…) That goodbye kept me out on the road searching. (…) Now that I see your face I can say my goodbye and make my own world.” (129)

Thus, all that remains for Loomis to do is to cut across his chest (“You want blood? Blood make you clean? You clean with blood?” (134)), thus shocking his religious wife Martha (while Bertha covers the face of his little daughter Zonia) and the others assembled in the room. Through this blood-cleansing ritual (bearing resemblance with Wole Soyinka’s Season of Anomy, in which in a bloody bull-sacrificing scene the myth of death and rebirth (cycle of renewal) is celebrated) Loomis emerges a new man. Alas, August Wilson says more in his stage directions (cf. p. 134) than in direct speech, which is criticized by Richards. This is a true observation, for the spectator cannot read the stage directions, and these words are not to be expressed by the actor’s acting, either:

Apparently Wilson sees this self-sacrificial mockery as a major epiphany for a man who, for so long, has been defined by forces other than his own. Unfortunately Wilson’s attempts to demonstrate this realization seem clearer in the accompanying stage notes than in Loomis’s startling actions. Wilson translates the spectacle eloquently:

(Having found his song, the song of self-sufficiency, fully resurrected, cleansed and given breath, ) (Richards; in Elkins, 2000, p. 189)

According to my observation, the last implication – although unmentioned in the play – would be that the little boy Reuben can now let the pigeons of his deceased friend fly into freedom, because he does not need them to sell them to the voodoo priest Bynum for his bloody rituals any more – for Bynum has found his “shiny man,” and the purpose of his life is fulfilled. This way, little Reuben will find peace, too. He had been haunted by the ghost of old Ms. Mabel, Mr. Seth’s mother, who beat him with her cane to make him let the birds go, as he had promised his dying friend (cf. 116-117). I see released pigeons flying into the sky as a symbol for a released soul. For some reason, Wilson did not develop the scene with the children and the ghost any further. In any case, it seems to imply hope for the future; especially with the younger generation.

In addition to the rugged terrain of this strange landscape, Joe Turner offers a redemptive subtext. Once the weary migrants face their respective demons in this way station, they at least are positioned toward the future rather than hopelessly bogged down in the mire of a past that they would sooner forget; they find their songs. Having witnessed the past out of which they and their ancestors have emerged, each, like Loomis, will be able to ‘say my goodbye and make my own world” (…). (Shannon, 1995, p. 142)

[...]

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¹ “Joe Turner was the brother of Pete Turner, governor of the state of Tennessee, who pressed Negroes into peonage and took them down the Mississippi River to the farms. To do this, they had decoys that lured Negroes in Memphis to crap games when they were arrested and put into prison. Women looking for their husbands who were late coming home would ask, `I wonder where my husband is.' Then they would be told, `Haven't you heard about Joe Turner? He's been here and gone. He had a long chain with 50 links to it where he could press Negroes in handcuffs and take them away.' So the Negroes around Memphis made up a song--(Singing) They tell me Joe Turner's come and gone. Oh, Lordy, tell me Joe Turner's come and gone. Oh, Lordy, got my man and gone.” Source: http://hearingvoices.com/transcript.php?fID=154

• Université: Southern Illinois University Carbondale (Department of English)
• Cours: ENGL 469
• Note: A
• Auteur: Christina Voss (married Lyons) (Auteur)
• Année de publication: 2006
• Pages: 11
• N° de catalogue: V1133007
• ISBN (ebook): 9783346529039
• Langue: anglais
• mots-clé: critical, analysis, turner’s, come, gone