Richard Wright's Lawd Today! And the political uses of modernism

African American Review, Spring, 2003 by Brannon Costello

However adamant and complete his renunciation of Christianity seems, Jake has difficulty sticking to it. Because of his condition of oppression and alienation, he deeply needs to believe in something that can interpret the world for him and explain why things are the way they are. He sometimes lapses into an almost rote repetition of Christian ideals; indeed, only a few pages after he condemns religion as a "gyp game," he tells Lil that "'the good Lawd's done got it all figgered out in his own good fashion. It's got to be that way so there can be some justice in this world, I reckon ....' His voice trailed off uncertainly" (34). Perhaps his uncertainty stems from the obviously (even to Jake) contradictory nature of his statement. At other times it seems as though Christianity is the only thing Jake does not believe in. When he goes to his post office box, he finds it crammed full of advertisements hawking everything from supernatural numbers-picking schemes to proto-Viagra vitality tonics. Oddly, given his ap parent disdain for belief in things divine, Jake seems to have some faith in the supernatural powers of the products advertised here. He says that "there might be something to this" ad for "THE MYSTERIOUS THREESTAR MEDIUM" (38). Of another that promises to "MAKE THE UNSEEN WORLD VISIBLE" with "Second Coming Incense," he ruminates that "maybe there's something in it if it comes straight from the spirit world" (39). He thinks that a good dose of "VIRGIN MARY'S NEVERFAIL HERB AND ROOT TONIC FOR NERVOUS AND RUNDOWN WOMEN" for Lil might save him the cost of her operation (40-41). Moreover, when it comes to picking his numbers for the policy game, he relies on dream interpretation because "he was much too shrewd to trust such a small thing as numbers to fortune tellers, spiritualists, and the like; these people were consulted only in case of a deep, life-and-death crisis (45). lake's inconsistency here--attempting (with limited success) to reject Christianity but replacing religious faith with a faith in charlatans and scam artists--further emphasizes his alienation and his need to believe in something that gives his life meaning.

However, if Jake does have a primary alternative belief system, another master narrative that explains the world to him, he finds it in the American success myth pervasive in the popular culture--newspaper, radio, films--that he consumes. Wright subtly drives this point home from the novel's opening sequence. As Jake climbs futilely up the neverending staircase, compelled ever upward by a booming voice, he thinks, "that old sonofabitch up there sounds just like my boss, too!" (5). Of course, when Jake awakens, he realizes that the voice in his dream actually belongs to Lil's radio, broadcasting the life-story of Abraham Lincoln, icon of bootstraps ideology. Wright suggests, then, that popular culture, or, more specifically, the success myth of limitless opportunity that it endorses, is Jake's "boss," the force that keeps him in this squirrel's cage. Jake constantly articulates his affirmation of this belief system. He tells Lil that "'nobody but lazy folks can starve in this country'" (33). He rejects Frankli n Roosevelt's attempts at economic reform because "'old Hoover was doing all right, only nobody couldn't see it, that's all.'" Moreover, he thinks that the New Deal is doomed to fail because nobody can tell his heroes "'old man Morgan and old Man Rockefeller and old man Ford what to do. . . . Why them men owns and runs the country!'" (29). Jake is fascinated with and envious of these men, and so his assertion that "'cold, hard cash runs this country, always did and always will'" is not intended as a social critique; instead, he simply wants to get enough money so that he can emulate these giants of capitalism that he so admires.