Joyce and Balwdin, and religious coming of age (LONG POST)

As we read Portrait in class, I was reading James Baldwin's novel Go Tell It on the Mountain. I usually can't really manage reading multiple books at a time, but I was trying it! But I found that, in some strange coincidence, it was a really crazy combination to be reading at the same time; particularly because of the crazy similarity in content, theme, and prose. As we read chapter three of Portrait -- watching Stephen take in a sermon and think about sin, eternity, Hell, etc. -- I was reading the part two, chapter three of Go Tell It on the Mountain, in which the main character is going through a super similar religious experience. All this got me thinking about the many similarities!!

Basically, Go Tell It on the Mountain is a 1953 novel about John Grimes, a 14 year old boy living in Harlem. He has grown up with his mother and step-father, a Pentecostal pastor, and most (if not all) of the tension in John's life springs from his questioning of his own faith, sexuality, and identity, and his stepfather's push against this questioning. The book takes place entirely on John's 14th birthday and follows him as he wanders through the day -- through a dirty film, through Central Park, through his home as his brother lays bloodied on the couch, and into the church his father preaches at for Saturday night prayer. The climax of John's story comes as he drops to his knees, weeping and saved, a little before sunrise on Sunday morning (he stayed in the church all of Saturday night in a religious fervor).

What I thought was most interesting about the parallels between Portrait and Go Tell It was the way that the authors talked about themselves. Joyce, as we know, based Portrait on his own formative years in Dublin, and much of the religious content of the book is true to his upbringing, if not commentary on the climate of his teenage years. Baldwin as well mirrored his own youth in Go Tell It: Just as John did, Baldwin not only grew up a Pentecostal in Harlem with a pastor stepfather, but was also saved at the age of 14. By using the fictional character of John, he allows himself artistic leeway, but the ties are deep and undeniable.

So, we have two stories of intense religious pressures: in Joyce's, Stephen grows to become supremely faithful and pious, convinced that this is the only way to rid himself of all of his sins and to truly bring himself back into the light. In Baldwin's, John is so overcome by emotion, belief, and the ideas he has been raised with that he breaks down, weeping and sweating in redemption, at the age of 14.

I think these concepts of religion are so so super intriguing because both authors eventually veered in totally opposite directions, as well!! We talked in class about Joyce's use of the term "portrait" as a way to reflect on his youth, not necessarily recount it in 100% accuracy, and in this sense I think his depiction is revealing: rather than focus only on the hard truths, Joyce describes a relationship with religion, and God, and sin, that seems warped and bizarre, using that artistic freedom to craft a deep understanding in the reader's mind of how truly strange it must have been to come of age in such an extreme world of Irish Catholicism in the late 19th C. Stephen becomes entrenched in this Catholic world not because he is prepared to be a priest and dedicate his life to God, but moreso because he feels so strongly about the sins he has committed and the guilt they have given him (and maybe a little bit because he likes the idea of the brooding cool priest image at first). This, cool enough, predicts Baldwin's telling of his own youth really well: In Go Tell It, John doesn't seem to understand the terms of his own savior and piety at first. In the opening chapters of the book he struggles with religion -- rather than a firm belief, he questions the moral foundations of the Pentecostal belief system and Christianity as a whole, and seems to view his religion as more of a form of spite and betterment. His brother Roy, whom his father favors and dotes on, isn't religious in any way, a decided rebel child. John tries to use his own intense belief as a way to gain his father's approval, rather than truly believing in its validity and truth. Generally, we see both characters (and their authors) using religion as a way to free themselves of their guilt, or as a tool to raise themselves up -- neither of which are really deep, complex understandings of their faiths.



As we know, Joyce definitely didn't stick on the path of devotion -- and neither did Baldwin. While Joyce exiled himself from Ireland (and inherently, Irish Catholicism) and denounced God, Baldwin went on to denounce Christianity and accuse it of acting as a vessel for the perpetuation of inequality, racism, and slavery in America. Also -- and we get hints of the beginnings of this in the novel -- Baldwin was openly gay, something that didn't really vibe with the Pentecostal Church. These story lines of later denunciation both contrast their roots so drastically, and I guess that's the point I'm getting at: just as we did in Portrait, in Go Tell It, we watch as an artist retraces his pseudo-missteps through religion as a young boy, with his eventual destination in mind. The lines between fiction and reality are severely blurred in both stories, and because of that grey area, that disconnect from the deeply personal, generalizations are allowed to arise: in both stories, religion doesn't necessarily serve as a positive experience for the author, but, rather, a formative foundation for their understanding of themselves as artists. Baldwin went on the write Giovanni's Room among others, a novel all about love, repression, and shame -- things we can see rooted in the religious tone and rhetoric in Go Tell It. Joyce, though in self-exile, obsessed over Dublin and the ironic piety of the city, and these themes play key roles in the rest of his work. It's difficult to articulate the connection for people who haven't read Go Tell It (which i REALLY recommend as a novel, and it's not nearly as hard to read as Portrait, trust me), but there's so much similarity and influence from Portrait in Go Tell It that can be seen -- not only as a novel, but as reflection and prediction of self. In both cases, the artist uses their warped, tumultuous upbringing in an intensely religious circle to reflect their growth away, to reflect on the strange terms by which they became deeply involved in said circles, and to reflect their minds, as artists.