In The Fullness of Time: The Racial Eschatology of James Baldwin's "My Dungeon Shook"
The following essay is the published version of one of my essays from my American Literature Course last semester. It is among my proudest works. Enjoy!
“My Dungeon Shook”, is the opening letter in James Baldwin’s classic 1963 book, “The Fire Next Time”. The letter, addressed to his nephew at the one-hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, is quintessentially Baldwin; one
can easily catch glimpses of his brilliance, his eloquence, his grace, and his poise, throughout the three-page letter. His prose is unmatched, and his analysis is both prophetic and timely. Baldwin uses his letter, addressed to his nephew of his namesake, to analyze the racial crisis that plagued America in the 1960s. Using three distinct categories of analysis; identity, or a crisis of the human search for inherent meaning, history, or the illustrated history of Black suffering in America at the hands of Whites, and ideal, what one could call a “Racial Eschatology” where there is true equity, freedom, justice, and humanity, Baldwin comprehensively paints a picture of America’s racial catastrophe.
That Baldwin critically analyzes race, however, is not the question. The question is, what is the best literary theory to use to interpret Baldwin’s work that both critically examines it and stays true to its original intention. The answer, as argued in this paper, is Critical Race Theory (CRT), because only CRT can truly capture the weight of Baldwin’s words, the boldness of his resolve, and the prophetic nature of his vision.
Though its definition is the subject of widespread political animus, Critical Race Theory is best summed up in this way,
“An intellectual and social movement and loosely organized framework of legal analysis based on the premise that race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to oppress and exploit people of color”(Britannica).
In the context of literature, CRT seeks to deconstruct race in America within literary texts. It does not seek to ask whether or not race plays a role or not in a given text (it is generally assumed that race is a social construction that plays a role in any text). Rather, it seeks to examine what effect existing racial structures of dominance, submission and oppression have on people, both within the text and outside of it. Put simply, a CRT literary scholar says, “Racial structures are at play here. How can we examine them, identify them, and ultimately destroy them?”, and “How can we center oppressed and marginalized voices in their quest for liberation using literature?”.
A whole host of categories fall under the purview of CRT analysis; among these are laws, history, language, culture, identity, religion, and economics. Thus, texts that use any of these categories to analyze race in a critical way, whether consciously or unconsciously on the part of the author, are using CRT, or at the very least agreeing with its premise.
Baldwin’s “My Dungeon Shook”, is no exception. To start the process of analyzing Baldwin’s letter, it is crucial that one starts where Baldwin starts, with Black and White identity.
Baldwin begins, true to form, with Black identity,
“Dear James, I have begun this letter five times and torn it up five times. I keep seeing your face, which is also the face of your father and my brother. Like him, you are tough, dark, vulnerable, mood—with a very definite tendency to sound truculent because you want no one to think you are soft”(Baldwin 17, 18).
Notice the language Baldwin uses to describe his Black male nephew and his brother, “tough, dark, vulnerable, truculent”. These are identity markers that are not inherent to Black men, they are not a consequence of biology. These identities are rather the imperative responses to the brutality and inhumanity of White racism. Why can’t nephew James be viewed as “soft”? Because for the Black man to be viewed as anything other than masculine and defensive is to risk his life in a world dominated by White men, a world that strung Black bodies on lynching trees.
Baldwin does not elaborate on this point, nor does he name or explicitly attribute these traits in his nephew and brother to White people. Indeed, he does not have to do either. His meaning lies buried beneath his words and the implications that they make.
But White people do come up eventually, and Baldwin’s attribution of White supremacy to his father’s death is a terrifying example,
“Well, he is dead, he never saw you, and he had a terrible life; he was defeated long before he died because, at the bottom of his heart, he really believed what white people said about him”(Baldwin 18).
Again, notice Baldwin’s intentional language. Baldwin’s father was “defeated long before he died”, because he accepted his role in White society, and internalized feelings of hopelessness and inferiority.
Baldwin’s father is a symbol of Black people in general. What does his death say about Black identity? According to Baldwin, there is an inherent “Black identity”, but that identity remains hidden and unrealized as a consequence of White supremacy, and the un-realization of inherent Blackness means death for Blacks at the hands of Whiteness. Albert Camus put it best,
“I rebel, therefore I exist”(Camus).
For Blacks to rebel against what White America says about them is for Blacks to live, to exist.
But Black identity is not only marked by what White people have done to Black people, but what Black people have been able to accomplish by mere audacity. Baldwin puts it this way,
“ It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity”(Baldwin 24).
This is what it means to be Black according to Baldwin, to achieve an “unassailable and monumental dignity”, even in the face of unbearable inhumanity. To be Black is to dare, to have hope, to have endurance, and to embody dignity. To hell with what White people have done to Black people! They remain in spite of it and their Blackness is so beautiful that it transcends it. As St. Paul said,
“More than that, we[a] rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope…”(Romans 5: 3-4).
Black character is produced by suffering, but Black hope comes from things eternal. Thus, what Black people were able to achieve in spite of racism is not only a result of what happened to them, but who they are internally. This is the culminating message of Baldwin’s terrible diagnosis and audacious celebration of Blackness. As Baldwin himself says,
“If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go”(Baldwin 22).
Baldwin does not only analyze Black identity, however. Analyzing White identity, or the lack of thereof, is just as crucial to him. However, Baldwin links the lack of White identity to the actions of White people throughout history. In doing so, he echoes the work of CRT scholars who seek not just to analyze identity but to interpret it in light of history.
“They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for so many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know”(Baldwin 23).
Notice the verbiage and disposition of White Americans in Baldwin’s eyes. White people “have had to believe” that Blacks are inferior because they are “trapped” in their own view of history. The pervasive belief among White Americans that Europeans invented modern civilization, that Whiteness was akin to morality and Godliness, that White people were inherently intellectual and creative beings, and that to be White was to be human, have trapped White people. In their quest to enslave and oppress Blacks, White people have oppressed themselves, and at the root of their self-imprisonment is their lack of identity.
“To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case, the danger, in the minds of most white Americans, is the loss of identity”(Baldwin 23).
White people do not possess an inherent sense of value or worth. They are not able to fully understand their own humanity, and so they have sought to rob the humanity of others. Using this identitarian analysis of Whiteness is a stunning example of Baldwin’s prophetic brilliance.
Nearly a decade before CRT scholars would analyze what exactly “Whiteness” means, never in terms of ethnicity or skin-color but in terms of social category, Baldwin illustrates that “Whiteness” doesn’t mean anything. Rather is the result of a void, a deep spiritual and internal void on the part of White America, that they have sought to fill with Black blood.
For White people to “act” and be “committed” to changing the structures of racism would mean that they would finally have to face their own humanity, or lack of it, and they would have to atone for their collective sin of racism. There would be no hiding behind the shield of inhuman racism because they would have to confront what it means to be human, in the same way that Black people have, according to Baldwin.
This is the crisis of White identity and this is the source of their oppression of Blacks throughout history. This is Baldwin’s deconstruction of Whiteness. Rather than Whiteness meaning everything, he points to the ultimate truth that Whiteness means absolutely nothing, and therein lies its core problem.
To further illustrate his point, Baldwin uses a brief summation of America’s racial history.
“This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish. Let me spell out precisely what I mean by that, for the heart of the matter is here, and the root of my dispute with my country. You were born where you were born, and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity”(Baldwin 22).
Baldwin is being both targeted and general simultaneously. He is not just describing the upbringing of his nephew James in Harlem’s ghettos, but is illustrating the mere magnitude of Black America’s collective experience of racism.
Racism defined Blacks as subhuman, institutionally segregated and marginalized them, murdered them in cold blood, set limits on their achievements, politically and economically disenfranchised them, and sought to destroy them under the weight of Whiteness.
The “brutal clarity” of which Baldwin speaks is perhaps best illustrated in Billie Holiday’s song, “Strange Fruit”,
“Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees”(Meerpool, lines 1-4).
To be lynched was akin to a modern-day crucifixion. It was a brutal, painful, and humiliating death, amidst the watchful and celebratory eyes of adoring White crowds. Its goal was to “send a message” to “uppity Niggers”, that if they stepped out of line, and dared to rebel against White supremacy, they would pay for their rebellion with their lives.
Baldwin is seeking to understand the significance and meaning of this brutality, as CRT scholars seek to do today. How can we vindicate the suffering of Black America so as to make it meaningful? How can we strive to rob the inhumane systems of racism of their permanence and the devastation they inflict on Black bodies and White souls? This is where a CRT literary interpretation of “My Dungeon Shook” takes a more radical and oddly religious turn.
CRT scholars seek not just to analyze racism, but to destroy it through deconstructing it and building a just and equitable society, a society that is more authentically human. Baldwin has this goal in mind as he constructs what can be called a “Racial Eschatology”.
The word, “Eschatology” coming from the ancient Greek work “eschatos”, meaning “end”, refers to a theology primarily concerned with the “end times”.
However, it can also mean, “a belief concerning death, the end of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humankind”(Merriam-Webster), with or without a basis in Christian theology.
Though Baldwin’s own journey with Christianity was highly complex, it can be said that he uses the foundation of Christian theology’s historic prediction of the coming of the Kingdom of God in his idealistic vision of a racially equitable world.
Baldwin’s admonition of his nephew is a particularly beautiful example,
“But these men are your brothers—your lost, younger brothers. And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it”(Baldwin 23).
Brothers! What a remarkable way to describe the same people who Baldwin, just a few lines earlier, condemned for their racism! For Baldwin, the world as it is now is temporally infected with the disease of racism ; it is neither eternal nor inevitable. White people, despite all of the misery they’ve caused Blacks, are their brethren, part of the human family, united in their common humanity. Thus, for Black people to be in community with Whites is for them to love White people by revealing and destroying their Whiteness, for it is their Whiteness that is holding White people back from realizing their full humanity.
But the racial eschatology of Baldwin’s literary imagination does not solely consist of Blacks loving and guiding Whites to self-actualization, nor is it only for the preservation of White people. A racially just and equitable America is in the best interests of all people, especially Blacks, because, as Baldwin so eloquently states,
“For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become”(Baldwin 24).
Absurd as it is amidst monumental suffering, Baldwin believes in hope. His racial eschaton is a realization of that hope, a full embodiment of humanity at its best, loving, kind, gentle, equitable, just and fully human. It is racial eschatology because it is the future that CRT scholars envision but that which remains unseen, and because it remains unseen, it must be driven by present action to full manifestation in the future.
Baldwin’s racial eschatology is as demanding as it is hopeful, absurd as it is the only rational way of being, prophetic as it is holy. As the Eucharistic Prayer used in the Book of Common Prayer beseeches God,
“In the fullness of time,
put all things in subjection under your Christ, and bring us to
that heavenly country where, with the ever-Blessed Virgin Mary and all your
saints, we may enter the everlasting heritage of your sons and
daughters; through Jesus Christ our Lord, the firstborn of all
creation, the head of the Church, and the author of our
salvation”(BCP), so too does Baldwin admonish humanity to “make America what America must become”.
This future, this otherworldly ideal of freedom and liberation that, when made known to humankind on earth, gets us closer to full flourishing, is God’s future, and it is the future that CRT scholars strive to achieve, whether one agrees with their “methods” or not. There is no peace in the world until humanity realizes its collective destiny, and through realization seeks to make everyone’s destiny all the more greater.
This is Baldwin’s idea, and may his hope not be in vain. As he himself says,
“You know, and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon. We cannot be free until they are free”.
This post is so engaging and thought-provoking. What a lovely introduction to James Baldwin!