Joe Marzolf
4/4/14
Senior Seminar: Musical Worlds
Course Paper Draft - Incomplete
Long Blues Song
Published in 1938, Uncle Tom’s Children presents four (five in the 1940 reissue)
short stories by Richard Wright that deal with the African-American experience in
postbellum, Jim Crow America. The collection as whole, I believe, represents a Blues
and Jazz aestheticism that reflects the increasing stake of African-American art in
American culture during and after the Harlem Renaissance. While this essay will give
some time to the collection as a whole, I will focus mostly on the short story “Long Black
Song” because I believe it most exemplifies the musical experience. First, however,
Richard Wright must be examined.
Wright grew up in Roxie, Mississippi, a place that was very much a segregated,
Southern town. The introduction in Uncle Tom’s Children, “The Ethics of Living Jim
Crow”, is a collection of autobiographical vignettes from Wright’s life. This
“autobiographical sketch” (1) reveals Wrights first contact with the strict rules of race
relation through the story of a cinder war he had with his friends against some white
boys. In the course of the conflict, considered a game by at least Wright and his friends,
Wright got hit with one of the broken milk bottles being thrown by the white boys. When
his mother saw him, afterwards, she smacked him and chastised him for not hiding from
the white children (1-2). Wright’s hardships weren’t only interracial; he faced tension
within his own community.
In his fleshed out autobiography, Black Boy, Wright tells the story of how he
became a “drunkard” at age six after a black man dragged him into a bar, and he began
repeating obscenities to bar-goers for change to afford more drinks even though his
mother continually beat him for his actions (20). Even his own family was a source of
torment for Wright. His mother was an invalid for most of his late adolescence and his
adulthood. He was in the care of his heavily religious grandmother who opposed his
views at every turn and punished him ruthlessly until he became completely
disenfranchised with religion and turned to atheism and, later, Communism.
Even at a young age, Wright’s actions mirror, in broad strokes, the lifestyle that
many Jazz and Blues musicals took on during their careers. Richard Wright turned to
alcohol in his youth. John Coltrane turned to heroin. Both attempt to dull the pain of the
world around them that was actively trying to deny them the freedom to be who they like
and do what they want. Now, that isn’t to say that all Jazz and Blues musicians were
addicted to something or another, and, in fact, Wright’s “alcoholism” was a fixture of his
adolescence, not his adulthood. It does inform on the world in which African-American
artists worked, a world where there are so few afforded opportunities forcing escapism
and transcendence through drugs and alcohol and, positively, art.
I believe there are other Richard Wright novels and stories that better exemplify
Jazz and the Blues. The Outsider, for example, is steeped in Jazz, I believe. However,
something happened after Uncle Tom’s Children that leaves it as the purest of Wright’s
expressions. Wright, after writing Uncle Tom’s Children, was very clear in his intent as
an author. In “How Bigger Was Born”, a companion essay to Wright’s seminal novel,
Native Son, Wright reflects on Uncle Tom’s Children by saying:
I had written a book of short stories which was published under the title of Uncle
Tom's Children. When the review of that book began to appear, I realized that I
had made an awful naive mistake. I found that I had written a book which even
bankers' daughters could read and weep over and feel good about. I swore to
myself that if I ever wrote another book, no one would weep over it; that it would
be so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of
tears. (454)
Wright felt that Uncle Tom’s Children was too compromising and didn’t portray the cold,
dark world he believed the African-American community lived in. The change, then, in
Native Son and The Outsider and others was a much more ruthless Wright. He began
writing characters that the audience did not have to identify with. Bigger Thomas and
Damon Cross were both murderers cast as the protagonists of their novels.
While I don’t discredit the skill evident in either novel or any of Wright’s other
work, reading them after reading Uncle Tom’s Children, however, I cannot help but feel
the anger in the texts. It is justifiable anger. It is understandable anger, but I believe there
is a purity in Uncle Tom’s Children that makes its message more objective.
Uncle Tom’s Children, while primarily drawing on its contemporary music like
Jazz, pays homage to classical, European roots like Jazz itself. The collection is
structured like a musical suite. Each smaller piece – story – is indicative of, but still
extracted from, the larger work, the societal position of African-Americans in the early
twentieth century. That is important to remember throughout the collection. Every story
is not a unique moment in time. They are ordinary life put under a microscope.
“The Ethics of Living Jim Crow” opens the collection like a band tuning their
instruments. It follows Wright’s life in small vignettes of racial discrimination that
prepares the reader for what is to come. “Big Boy Leaves Home” opens the suite. The
opening banter between Big Boy and his friends as they walk through the woods mirrors
the “playing-off” nature of improvisational Jazz as they hurl insults at each other and sing
insulting songs. After two of Big Boy’s friends, Lester and Buck, are killed and Big Boy
and Bobo are forced to separate and flee, the narrative becomes a solo performance. Big
Boy quickly finds himself all alone trying to escape the encircling mob.
In that moment, the first appearance of a recurring motif appears. Bobo’s capture
and lynching while Big Boy watches helplessly from his hiding place paints the violence
that drips from every story in the collection. In fact, the story as a whole sets up a frame
that each of the following stories improvise on. It establishes the skeleton of the
narrative: a force calls for action, said action draws the ire of white society, the characters
are forced to deal with the consequences levied from the dominant group. The treatment
of this framework changes as the stories progress.
“Down By the Riverside” signifies a gospel song by the same name and includes
an excerpt of the song (Wright, Uncle Tom’s Children, 73). The story follows Mann, a
farmer, during a flood as he tries to get his pregnant wife to safety before being swept up
in the effort to repair a failing levy. Like Big Boy, Mann is put in a position of having
angered society. Unbeknownst to him, he utilizes the boat of a white man, Mr. Heartfield.
When Mann arrives at Heartfield and asks for help, he is forced to kill Heartfield when
the man begins shooting at him for stealing the boat. This mirrors Big Boys shooting of
Jim at the pond. Neither wanted to kill. Instead, they were put in a situation where they
had to protect themselves, but, ultimately, they are demonized for their actions.
The characters diverge in their stories at the end. Where Big Boy hides and
escapes, Mann is captured and decides to end his life on his terms by trying to run into
the swollen river before the soldiers can kill him. The improvisation of Big Boys’
narrative in “Down By the Riverside” seems like a sadder, less hopeful telling. However,
I argue there is more hope in it than “Big Boy Leaves Home.” Big Boy leave the South in
secret and will have to start with nothing while still living in fear of being found. Mann,
in his death, takes agency. He takes control from the soldiers when he runs and chooses
his death. It is still a less than hopeful ending, but it is, I assert, an improvement over Big
Boy’s place as fugitive-refugee.
“Long Black Song” is a turning point in the collection, and the most important
story in the collection in my opinion. The story itself is broken up into four parts, which
is odd considering the pieces relatively short length, but this is present throughout the
collection. The breaks don’t offer much in the way of division. Idea flow freely between
the sections and they occur almost immediately after each other, temporally. I offer, then,
that the division into four sections emulates a measure, specifically, a four-four measure.
This story, then, would comprise of one bar of music not one full song. This frames the
narrative not as an entire message but as a part of a larger message. The message isn’t
that all of the collection adds up to a song. While the measure hypothesis could be and
perhaps should be extended beyond “Long Black Song,” its title is unique.
“Long Black Song” is not long. It is a slim thirty-two pages. The collection itself
is only 263 pages. The titular “Long Black Song” is not self-referential. It, instead, speaks
to the broader, real African-American experience. While the story is self-contained,
Wright wants to make sure the reader understands this is not isolated; this is not special.
This is a facet of real people that have to live in constant fear.
Silas, though, acts as a sort of beacon for those in fear. He is “Long Black
Song”’s Big Boy and Mann. Popular convention would label Sarah in that role in this
story, and I believe that her and Silas have co-roles in this story. However, I believe the
arc that Silas follows is closer to the established motif. He is placed in the situation of
having a salesman come into his house and rapes his wife. Antebellum race relations
would treat the whole situation by ignoring it. Silas would have no recourse. Here,
though, he takes his compensation in a pound of flesh.
This is radically different from Big Boy who acts out of an almost animalistic
instinct, and significantly different from Mann who chooses agency only when faced with
certain death. Silas has the opportunity to make it all go away. If he pays the man for the
graphophone, everything goes back to normal. Instead, he stand up for himself and his
family. Ultimately, this leads to his death, but dying was his choice and he chooses it
while under no duress unlike Mann.
In addition to Silas as a play on the Big Boy-motif, there is also a recurring,
Wagnerian motif in “Long Black Song”. The story begins with Ruth, Sarah and Silas’
child, crying. After trying to sooth the child with water, Sarah gives the child an old
clock. Ruth immediately starts slapping the clock with a rhythmic “Bink! Bink! Bink!”
(126) This noise functions as a band leader calling a band to order with a “One, two,
three.” Its placement at the beginning of the story establishes the frame of the narrative.
Ruth’s crying is the tuning of the band, and her slapping the clock is the start of the piece.
After Sarah gives Ruth a stick to hit the clock with, making the clock a true drum
allegory, the sound changes. “Bink” is never heard again. Instead, the noise becomes
“Bang!” (127) With her drum, Ruth acts like an accompaniment that keeps Sarah’s
improvisations in context. Without them, the narrative floats off into the past as Sarah
remembers Tom and reflects on his disappearance. Throughout Sarah’s memories, the
sharp banging runs constantly to keep the piece grounded in the present.
Upon the arrival of the white salesman, the banging becomes secondary to the
music of the graphophone. The tribal, percussive melodies are usurped by the
commercialized hymnal. The salesman insists that the graphophone is what Sarah needs.
Its time keeping and its music are what it is needed. It isn’t until Sarah’s rape when the
banging returns – with new players at the instrument. The refinement of the socially
acceptable hymns fade out to the simple, animalistic rhythms of sex.
After that, the only banging in the story comes from guns. The innocence of
Ruth’s playing goes silent and is replaced by the sounds of violence. Even though
delicate music tried to take over the piece, ultimately, it is the pounding percussion that
perseveres because it is speaks to the every aspect of experience. Life and happiness
through Ruth, sorrow through Sarah, and empowerment and death through Silas.
I believe the remaining two stories represent a divergence in the narrative. Where
the other narratives are increasingly more empowering of their main characters, “Fire and
Cloud” and “Bright and Morning Star” represent equal power channeled through
different avenues.
Incomplete Draft
Things to still do:
1. Apply thesis to “Fire and Cloud” and “Bright and Morning Star”
2. Further explore Sarah’s characterization in “Long Black Song”
3. Expand on all stories of the collection including the collection as a whole
4. More direct ties to music especially Jazz and the Blues
Works Cited
Wright, Richard. Black Boy. New York: HarperPerennial Modern Classics, 2008. Print.
Wright, Richard. "How Bigger Was Born." Native Son. New York: Harper Perennial
Modern Classics, 2005. 431-62. Print.
Wright, Richard. Uncle Tom's Children. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics,
2008. Print.