In â€å“the Rockpileã¢â‚¬â By James Baldwin, Which Word Most Accurately Describes Roy?
Analysis of James Baldwin's The Rockpile
The themes and elements of "The Rockpile" all share similarities with James Baldwin'south own experiences every bit a boyfriend in Harlem. Baldwin followed in the footsteps of his stepfather, a storefront preacher, and preached from age fourteen to age 17; this experience and environment inform much of Baldwin'south work. The consistent themes in Baldwin'south fiction, including personal identity, racial struggle, and the role of faith in daily life are present in "The Rockpile." The story was start published in Baldwin's 1965 collection Going to Run across the Man.
Baldwin centers the story on the rockpile, which represents stability and fixture but also a great temptation to the immature protagonist of the story, Roy. The rockpile is at the center of the earth, but information technology is besides a kind of hell, where children—the bad kids—get to fight for their identify on the pile. As in the fight that opens Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (which this resembles), the battles are cruel and bloody.
James Baldwin/Biography.com
The family in Baldwin'due south story is a reverent Christian family; the children have biblical names—John, Paul, Delilah—except Roy, the story'due south cardinal character. Roy is the oldest, and information technology is articulate that he will one day take the place of authority from his father, Gabriel. Roy's fight on the rockpile is also a style of determining his clout to his own position of authority, and Baldwin plays these scenes as though Roy takes power from the rockpile itself, both its centrality and its stability. Nonetheless, the rockpile serves as a locus for violence and strength.
The graphic symbol most connected to Roy is Gabriel. Gabriel is a government minister and in this sense stands for a Holy Father, a kind of personification of the Christian God. He is jealous, kind, powerful, and forgiving and carries the drape of authority with the force to back it upwards. When Roy is injured on the rockpile, Gabriel does not scold him (as does his female parent) but consoles him and indeed embraces the children as all "his children"—fifty-fifty though John is non his, only as Baldwin tells the states, a "nameless stranger from his mother'south life of sin." John is the bastard, but still Gabriel addresses the children as "all his."
Though Roy is forbidden to play on the rockpile— Baldwin makes reference to "the forbidden street beneath," and the implication of what "beneath" means is clear—a key scene occurs as Roy disobeys his mother and joins the gang fight on the pile. Equally Roy ascends to the top of the pile, he is struck on the head. Baldwin gives usa his description of the experience: "Then for a moment at that place was no movement at all, no sound, the dominicus, arrested, lay on the street and the sidewalk and the arrested boys." The lord's day itself has stopped; time has stopped. Baldwin stops time, in a story sense and a existent sense, a caesura, to point a key moment in Roy's development. Afterward getting his breath, Baldwin tells us that "the figure on the footing" "caught its breath" and "felt its own blood." The impersonal pronoun suggests a wounded animal. Instead of fighting (survival instinct), though, Roy calls for his mother (social imperative). Roy has left the jungle and turned toward civilization. This is necessary for Roy to assume an authoritative role.
Baldwin creates tension in the story past setting up sets of opposing forces: Roy'south temptation versus his noesis of the law he must non transgress; the illegitimate son John versus the real sons; the father of the family unit versus the ascending potency figure, anxious to prove himself; the potential power and violent capacity of Gabriel versus Gabriel's compassion and sense of justice. For another writer (Crane, for instance) these oppositions might collide to create a destructive, chaotic surroundings through which society may or may not settle out. But Baldwin chooses to have his tensions mediated by the father'south recognition that his son's ascendancy is inevitable and necessary. The tale might also serve as a religious allegory in this sense. Roy (whose proper name recalls the French word for rex) must pass through temptation and the trials of hell before he tin can arise his throne and go nigh his father'due south (or Father's) concern.
Literary Criticism of James Baldwin
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baldwin, James. "The Rockpile." In Going to Meet the Man. New York: Vintage, 1995.
Campbell, James. Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin. Berkeley: Academy of California Printing, 2002.
Kinnamon, Keneth, ed. James Baldwin: A Collection of Critical Essays. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974.
McBride, Dwight A., ed. James Baldwin Now. New York: New York Academy Press, 1999.
Categories: American Literature, Literary Criticism, Literature, Short Story
Source: https://literariness.org/2021/06/12/analysis-of-james-baldwins-the-rockpile/
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