AugustWilson.net
CHAPTER FOUR:
Mythical Conversions in Joe Turner's Come and Gone
By Michael Downing
January 1, 2004
"Wilson is in the business of expanding--within established patterns--what
African American folklore means and what it does. Like [Henry] Dumas and [Toni]
Morrison, he is as much a mythmaker as he is a reflector of the cultural strands
of the lore he uses."
---Trudier Harris
"[August] Wilson and [Romare] Bearden have addressed what Wole Soyinka describes
as the "deep-seated need of creative man to recover this archetypal
consciousness," and their art, which shares many characteristics, shares most of
all its ability to speak across racial and cultural lines."
---Joan Fishman
Joe Turner's Come and Gone opens with Bynum, who, according to Seth Holly, is
standing in the yard drawing "a big circle with that stick and now he's dancing
around" (2). Bynum then proceeds to kill a pigeon and put its blood into a cup.
This blood ritual literally sets the stage for the many mythological conversions
which occur in the play. In an article entitled, "August Wilson's Folk
Traditions," Trudier Harris argues that Bynum's ritual is akin to converting the
bird in the sky into a bird on the ground, thereby reconciling heaven and earth
and, by extension, mother and daughter. Harris writes,
By pouring pigeon blood into the ground, the power of flight inherent in the
bird is reversed, grounded so to speak, in a way that will ensure the eventual
gathering of the separated mother and daughter at the boarding house. Loomis is
almost coincidental to the binding that Bynum has effected with Martha and Zonia,
but Bynum nevertheless has him under a spell to the extent that he feels
obligated to bring his daughter to her mother. (63)
In addition to setting a chain of mythological events into motion on the stage,
Bynum's ritual also serves to draw the audience into Wilson's developing
mythological realm. By witnessing this powerful blood ritual, the audience is
immediately connected to ancient, subconscious rituals and thereby transported
into the realm of myth. The ritualistic letting of blood--through the sacrifice
of the pigeon--reaches deep into the audience's collective psyche. Within
Gatesian thought, this is no accident, as Wilson once again fulfills the "black
poet's mythopoeic function" which is to "create, by definition, reality for the
members of his or her community, to allow them to perceive their universe in a
distinctively new way" (177). As such a cultural mythmaker, Wilson works to
reconstruct and celebrate a meaningful social mythology by incorporating such a
mythic motif as Bynum's blood ritual.
As one might expect, Joe Turner's Come and Gone may be Wilson's most overtly
"mythic" play. I say "overtly" mythic because, in addition to the opening scene
involving the sacrifice of the pigeon, Wilson incorporates into Joe Turner such
powerfully mythic motifs as Bynum's baptism of blood, dream visions as
experienced by Bynum and Loomis, Bynum's "binding song," and the ritual
scarification Herald Loomis, not to mention the direct identification of such
characters as "the shiny man," and Rutherford Selig as "the people finder."
These direct invocations of literary metaphor--where one sign system serves for
and is eventually converted into another sign system--are direct evidence of the
mythicality of Joe Turner and serve as axioms for Wilson's mythological
conversions from stereotype to archetype.
In Joe Turner's Come and Gone, the conversions from racial stereotype to
mythological archetype are as abundant and as fully realized as they are in any
of Wilson's plays. The work opens with boardinghouse owner Seth Holly watching
Bynum, who, according to Seth, is "looking all over the yard for that pigeon"
(1). Bynum, when we first meet him, is cast in stereotype, and Seth Holly is
positioned in such a way as to amplify the negative qualities of Bynum's
stereotype. For example, as Bynum looks for the pigeon, Seth calls Bynum's
activities, in succession, "The damnest thing I seen . . . old mumbo jumbo
nonsense . . . [and] all that heebie-jeebie stuff" (1). The effect of this
identification of Bynum's activities as "nonsense" by a member of his own race
assists in depicting Bynum's character originally as stereotype, and this is an
integral part of Wilson's creative process. In order for Bynum to be converted
into archetype, he must begin as stereotype.
The audience, because they have only limited information concerning Bynum,
originally is provided no alternative perspective by Wilson and--at least
momentarily--has little choice but to side with Seth's "through the window"
interpretation of Bynum's activities. Sandra Shannon sees Bynum originally
constructed as "comic relief." She writes,
Audiences are at first not challenged to alter their impressions of Bynum as
comic relief rather than conveyor of anything of serious value. Instead, the
Bynum who appears early in Joe Turner reinforces lingering inclinations to
caricature voodoo practice and to doubt the sanity of anyone who engages in it.
(134)
Just as African-American art, ritual, and music traditionally have been, at worst, denigrated, or, at best, kept at a certain distance by white culture, Bynum's activities can only be seen by the audience "at a certain distance," and this "distance" results in the perpetuation of a caricature or stereotype. It seems Wilson's dramatic model in Joe Turner mimics a certain cultural reality.
To cite this page:
Downing, Michael. "Chapter Four: Mythological Conversions in Joe Turner's Come and Gone." AugustWilson.net. Date of Publication. Today's Date. URL.
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