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Kate Robinson
Professor Osagie
English 200H
February 11, 2013
Individual and Societal Denial in David Bradley's The Chaneysville Incident
The role of denial in daily life is inherent to one's character and culture. It is
something that presents itself in a variety of different ways, and at any given time.
David Bradley's The Chaneysville Incident addresses all levels of denial in a black
community, from the headspace of an individual all the way up to cultural denial.
Denial can mean silence or lying, influences broken relationships and creates
skewed viewpoints. Denial adds complexity to inner thoughts, relationships, a
community and an overall society. As an active emotion it is intrinsic and
problematic, and Bradley's novel serves to emphasize its convoluted yet powerful
nature. Presented from the eyes of John Washington, an African-American historian,
denial of race and its implications is not limited to his culture, as it translates to the
white populace as well. As much as denial is not limited to race it is not limited to
generation, and is found in all ages at all times. Bradley offers us a subset of the
power and inhibitive nature of denial in a small subset of people that translates into
the larger scope of our modern world.
John Washington, the main character and general focus of The Chaneysville
Incident, is an African American historian who is dually challenged by his family's
past and his current position as a black man dating a white girl, the very person he
has been raised to hate. The novel focuses on his journey of discovering the detailed
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lives of his ancestors and using that information to learn more about his father,
Moses, who was a perpetual mystery, and uncover the plan behind his suicide.
Ultimately John relies on his imagination instead of the hard facts he has been
researching his whole life (Wilson). John is an interesting character outside the
nature of his denial, but he one of the characters most buried by this emotion. Not
only does the presence of denial affect John's personal mentality, as he does not
accept certain irrefutable facts or chooses to ignore them, but it affects his personal
relationships with those that are a part of his life. He has to overcome the walls that
his perpetual denial has built.
One of the most complicated relationships in John's life is with Judith, his
girlfriend of five years. John admits, "There was a lot that I needed that she would
never understand. For she was a woman and she was white, and though I [John]
loved her there were points of reference that we would never share" (Bradley 384).
John faces various points of denial with the strong personality of Judith, most of
which revolves around her being white and him being black. This racial difference is
not about skin tone or culture; it is about lack of understanding on both sides. John
has been raised to hate all people white. Judith does not understand this hatred.
Charles Mills' Racial Contract emphasizes this division. He explains throughout his
entire book that our world is built on a contract of white supremacy that white
people tend to ignore and continuously deny. He says, "race is the common
conceptual denominator that gradually came to signify the respective global
statuses of superiority and inferiority, privilege and subordination" (Mills 21).
Judith and John struggle to overcome their respective differences and denial of their
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differences, but it is not the only problem that presents itself. Judith is a psychiatrist
that wants to understand John, but cannot break through the barriers of John's
personal denial. John says he is not an alcoholic, but cannot break the habit of
drinking his toddies. Judith says John is afraid of the Hill, where he grew up, and he
denies this fear (Bradley 391). Ultimately John has to get over his denial of either his
hate for all white people, or his love for Judith. In Shlomo Breznitz's article "The
Seven Kinds of Denial" he states that denial presents itself in seven different forms.
John Washington's denial over his personal relationship with Judith can be seen as a
form of denial of vulnerability, which is using denial as a method of self-protection
(261). Essentially he lies to himself about what he believes in and in doing so
alienates the people around him to better preserve his own personal mentality.
Just as there are different kinds of denial, there are different ways that John
shows his refusal of the obvious. One such thing is John's continuous silence. In
many situations he simply chooses not to answer whoever is speaking to him, as if
answering someone is confirming his or her words as truth. One example is when
Old Jack Crawley is slowly dying and John is the only one there to witness his
decline. Jack is asking John if he wants a story and he thinks, "No, I did not want a
story. I wanted to sit and drink hot whiskey and pray that we would make it through
he night, and later fall into a drugged and dreamless sleep. And so I did not give him
the response he wanted; I did not give him a response at all" (Bradley 77). This is
not the only instance where John ignores the one who is talking to him, and
definitely not the only person he ignores. John also consistently denies his culture.
He goes to college, denying that he will learn to think like a white man, and when he
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returns he denies the differences between whites and blacks when trying to
convince Jack to go to the hospital. Another instance where John denies his heritage
and their beliefs is when he is listening to the west wind. Although Jack had taught
him it was the sound of the Indian ghosts, John as a kid had always heard singing.
When he had learned about the physics of the sound wind had created over the
uneven terrain, he presented this information to Jack, who instantly rejected this
knowledge. As an adult however, John still heard singing when the wind blew and
this has led to a feeling desperation for escape, to relinquish is heritage and deny its
power on his life. He so badly wanted to flee the uneven lands of the hills, live on flat
land and never return. John is haunted as an adult because despite his denial of
"false" information, he still hears singing in the wind, he cannot escape his past
(Bradley 382). John denies his culture but he also turns down a lot of what Judith
presents as accurate, he denies his hate towards white people until he cannot
anymore and he denies his fear of the town that created him.
Although John's denial is deep rooted in his personal life and larger culture,
he is not the only individual that faces heavy issues of denial in their daily lives. As
previously mentioned, Judith has her own issues of denial. She believes throughout
the novel that she can come to understand John and the way in which he grew up,
denying the differences that can never be breached. She is "speaking within the
experience and presuppositions of the African American community" (Wilson).
Before Judith can even hope to understand the man she loves she needs to confront
her denial about being so different from him.
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Even within the Washington family there are relationships built on denial.
Yvette Stanton, John's mother lost her son Bill to the war and her husband to
suicide. John went to college and never returned to visit her. She is clearly lonely as
her family is in ruins. However when John visits he goes into her room and sees
pictures of them, pictures that do not represent who they have become or the
relationships that had been formed. The pictures show the family she did not have.
John describes them as "dead images of dead people" (Bradley 157). Yvette denies
the changes that her family has clearly been through. She has created her own
history for them. Breznitz might describe this as a denial of affect, as she is trying to
cope and counteract anxiety that the death of her family members has clearly
caused (269). She cannot face the family she has now, and chooses to remember the
family she might have once had.
Denial on an individual level is not limited to John, Judith or Yvette. Bradley
presents us with individual denial in almost every character in some way. However,
there is a sense of denial within the community itself that also demands attention.
The Hill, which is the black community that John grew up in, shares denial, so much
so that they raise their children on it. The colored community denies that there were
problems with extreme racism as they raise their young children, avoiding the real
reasons why they drive the boys far away to get their hair cut, or distract them from
going to the places in town that do not welcome black people (Bradley 111). They
allow their children to live with a sense of naiveté. Much like silence was John's form
of denial, avoidance was the way the hill dealt with their issues. When John was a
child he could pretend that the white kids were not yelling at him or chasing him
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home because he had learned avoidance from the town he grew up in. Denial
however is not just limited to the Hill, as it extends into the town, populated by
mostly white people. White people, as Mills defines, are the beneficiaries of the
Racial Contract, even if they are not the signatories, which is to say that all white
people benefit from this system even if they choose to ignore it and deny its
existence. Both sides of this community denied their place compared to each other,
and the problems that were the direct consequence of simply being different races.
The complicating nature of denial affects people on an individual basis, in
relationships, in communities and on a broader scale of society. The Chaneysville
Incident includes each of these levels of denial. On a broader scale, Bradley
incorporates the denial of racism and sexism among others, in ideology that is
shared by large groups of people. When John is explaining his great-greatgrandfather, C.K.'s story, he explains the nature of slavery. C.K. was aiding slaves in
fleeing the south, but some house slaves had gotten so comfortable they could deny
their position of being property (Bradley 354). Mills explains that denial of the racial
contract is part of its overall nature. White people enforce the rules of the contract
while denying its existence. Both sides of the contract, the persons and the sub
persons deny its existence and "Evasion and self deception thus become the
epistemic norm" (Mills 97). Mills is telling us what Bradley is describing, that the
world is built on racist principles that are so buried in our culture that it is hard to
fully distinguish them for what they are. Dirk Phillipsen proliferates on the
education of race and racism as something that we have always believed has existed
instead of something that we created as a culture (195). Just like how John's teacher
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as a kid believed he cheated on his homework when it was done well, there are
assumptions about race that have become a part of our society. These assumptions
are denied by the same people that perpetuate them. As described, one of the main
tools of denial in The Chaneysville Incident is avoidance and silence. Every human
being can deny what is ugly about themselves as a person, about their family,
community or even the society that surrounds them. John Washington is central in
humanizing denial on a singular level, but also helps to explain to Judith how denial
has a powerful impact on all levels.
In The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley, we become privy to all
different levels of denial and its many different forms. We see how it affects John
Washington as well as his family, in denial of facts, denial of relationships and denial
of culture. We watch how John denies his biggest fears, or his biggest weaknesses,
which includes alcohol, his need for facts and answers, and arguably, his love for
Judith. We learn how Yvette Stanton denies her past, how Judith denies her
differences in culture from John and so on. Denial shapes the community and the
world that includes black versus white. Aside from the lessons that Bradley shows
throughout his novel, we learn to recognize denial in various forms. Whether that is
outright communication, inner turmoil, silence or avoidance, denial functions in so
many different ways. It transcends time, it fuels hate and complicates love and no
matter what it includes everyone, regardless of age, gender or race. Backed by a
variety of different scholars and writers, racism and the denial of racism is an everpresent part of our culture. What Bradley shows us throughout his novel can be
easily, and formidably, applied to modern civilization and the society in which we
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live, and can still stand to teach us valuable lessons about overcoming denial to
solve the problems that control us.
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Works Cited
Bradley, David. The Chaneysville Incident: A Novel. New York: Harper & Row, 1990.
Print.
Breznitz, Shlomo. "The Seven Kinds of Denial." (n.d.): n. pag. Print.
Mills, Charles W. The Racial Contract. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1997. Print.
Phillipsen, Dirk. "Investment, Obsession, and Denial: The Ideology of Race in the
American Mind." JSTOR. JSTOR, 2003. Web. 5 Feb. 2013.
Wilson, Matthew. "The African American Historian: David Bradley's 'The Chaneysville
Incident.'" The Free Library. Farlex, 1995. Web. 2 Feb. 2013.