Identity
The primary theme in the play is the search for identity. Although Herald
Loomis believes he is searching for his lost wife, Martha, the African
conjurer, Bynum, lets him know that Herald is really searching for his
song or identity. Herald has forgotten his song as a result of his
seven-year enslavement by Joe Turner, a notorious Tennessee plantation
owner that illegally enslaved free African Americans to work for him.
Bynum tells Herald that Turner captured him, not just to work on his
plantation, but to try to steal Herald’s song. Says Bynum: ‘‘Now he’s got
you bound up to where you can’t sing your own song. Couldn’t sing it them
seven years ‘cause you was afraid he would snatch it from under you.’’
Herald’s plight is representative of many African Americans in this time
period who felt cut off from their African heritage as a result of the
crippling effects of slavery.
The various characters in the play represent a cross-section of the
different options that are open to African Americans trying to find their
identities. At one extreme there are people like Seth, an African-American
man who was born free in the North. Seth devotes his life to making money,
embracing capitalism like many other American businessmen. When Selig
tries to overcharge him for some inferior materials, Seth lets him know
that he is not going to be fooled. Says Seth: ‘‘Don’t come talking that
twenty-five cent stuff to me over no low-grade sheet metal.’’ In addition,
Seth can do math quickly in his head, he demands payment in advance from
his tenants, and he is shocked when Jeremy quits his job after refusing to
pay an extortion fee. Says Seth: ‘‘What kind of sense it make to get fired
from a job where you making eight dollars a week and all it cost you is
fifty cents. That’s seven dollars and fifty cents profit!’’ Seth is also
very disparaging toward his African heritage, calling the African rituals
that Bynum performs ‘‘old mumbo jumbo nonsense.’’
Bynum represents the other extreme, people who attempt to maintain a
tight hold on their African heritage. An African rootworker, or conjurer,
Bynum has the ‘‘Binding Song,’’ a power that binds people together so that
they can find each other. At one point in the play, Herald says that Bynum
is ‘‘one of them bones people,’’ referencing Herald’s vision of his
African ancestors. In between these two extremes, there are people like
Bertha, a Christian woman who also performs traditional African rituals.
Says Bertha to Seth: ‘‘It don’t hurt none. I can’t say if it help . . .
but it don’t hurt none.’’ Some, like Mattie, choose to find their
identities in motherhood, searching for a man to make them complete, while
others, like Molly, choose to live the single life.
Migration
When Bynum first meets Herald and asks him where he and his daughter are
coming from, Herald says, ‘‘Come from all over. Whicheverway the road take
us that’s the way we go.’’ This was true for many African Americans at the
time. Later, Bynum refers to one of the causes of this mass migration,
when he is discussing the individual situation of Herald. Says Bynum:
‘‘See, Mr. Loomis, when a man forgets his song he goes off in search of it
. . . till he find out he’s got it with him all the time.’’ Herald
wanders, unknowingly searching for his identity. However, Herald is not
the only character who wanders in the play. Bynum has wandered his whole
life, and Seth notes that this is a common trend: ‘‘I done seen a hundred
niggers like him. He’s one of them fellows never could stay in one place.
He was wandering all around the country till he got old and settled
here.’’
This migratory trend has been passed down to the new generation.
Jeremy, one of the younger tenants, does not care when he loses his job.
As he tells Seth: ‘‘There’s a big road out there. I can get my guitar and
always find me another place to stay. I ain’t planning on staying in one
place for too long noway.’’ He lives with Mattie for a while, but feels
tied down. When he finds Molly, a fellow traveler, he thinks he will be
happy with her, and tries to encourage her to come with him. Says Jeremy:
‘‘Don’t you wanna travel around and look at some places with Jeremy? With
a woman like you beside him, a man can make it nice in the world.’’
Likewise, Mattie keeps searching for her lost man, Jack Carper, whom she
thinks will make her whole once again. Still, she notes that this strategy
is not working for her, saying that ‘‘I ain’t never found no place for me
to fit. Seem like all I do is start over.’’ The trend of searching for a
lost mate continues even with the youngest generation, as demonstrated by
the two children, Reuben and Zonia. When Reuben finds out that Zonia is
leaving, he tells her that she is his girl, and says: ‘‘When I get grown,
I come looking for you.’’
Racial Exploitation and Discrimination
Throughout the play, the African-American characters are exploited or
discriminated against in various ways by white people. In the American
South, this was fairly common at the time and some, like Martha, left to
avoid intense racial discrimination. When Herald finally catches up with
Martha, she explains why she migrated to Pennsylvania. Says Martha:
‘‘Reverend Tolliver wanted to move the church up North ‘cause of all the
trouble the colored folks was having down there.’’
However, discrimination and exploitation also happened in the . Jeremy
gives two examples where this happens to him. Jeremy relates an example
where some white policemen came up to him and one of his co-workers, after
they had just bought a drink. Says Jeremy: ‘‘Asked us if we was working.
We told them we was putting in the road over yonder and that it was our
payday.’’ However, even though Jeremy and his co-worker have a valid
occupation, the police still ‘‘snatched hold of us to get that two
dollars.’’ The local police use their power to steal money from any black
men that they find on the street, even if they are not vagrants. Later in
the play, Jeremy is the victim of extortion. As he notes to Seth and
Molly, at Jeremy’s job, a white man goes ‘‘around to all the colored
making them give him fifty cents to keep hold to their jobs.’’ Jeremy
refuses to pay, is fired, and notes the unfairJ ness of the white man’s
actions: ‘‘He go around to all the colored and he got ten dollars extra.
That’s more than I make for a whole week.’’
Even Selig, who is a business associate of Seth’s and who is welcomed
in the boardinghouse with free food, comes from a family that has
exploited African Americans. As Selig notes, ‘‘My great-granddaddy used to
bring Nigras across the ocean on ships.’’ In addition, Selig’s father
‘‘used to find runaway slaves for the plantation bosses.’’ Selig’s
people-finding business, on the other hand, is viewed as a positive
endeavor by most of his African-American customers. However, this business
is itself built upon the businesses of his forefathers, because if there
had not been any slavery, there would not be a mass of dislocated African
Americans trying to find their families. Selig himself notes this to
Herald: ‘‘After Abraham Lincoln give you all Nigras your freedom papers
and with you all looking all over for each other . . . we started finding
Nigras for Nigras.’’
