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

African American Review, Spring, 2003 by Brannon Costello

Jake's chief local example of the embodiment of bootstraps success is Doc, his local barber. When Doc rails against Communist organizer Duke, Jake "follow[s] the movement of Doc's lips with his own and nod[s] approval" (58). Doc, who owns his own store and has a modicum of political influence, refuses to accept that anyone might be out of work for any reason but laziness. In order to explain his success, Doc likens himself to a frog, trapped in a churn of milk, who kicked until he turned the milk to butter, then "jumped on top of that ball of butter and hopped right out of the chum" (60). Further, he tells Jake that, if Communists "'kept their damn mouths shut and tried to get hold of something, some money, or property, then they'd get somewhere'" (63).

Interestingly, religion does play a part in this success myth, but not the community-forming, potentially radical and oppositional Christianity that we see in "Fire and Cloud" and "Bright and Morning Star," or even the simply sustaining Christianity of Lil's Unity magazines. Instead, this religion, a fairly inactive and excessively general faith in the goodness of God's long-term plan, simply serves to endorse and authorize the status quo; it becomes an explanation for how the rich get rich and a justification for keeping them that way. For instance, when Jake and his friends discuss Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and John D. Rockefeller, they claim that these men "'got to be successful by following the Golden Rule.... they did to other men what they wanted them men to do to them...and Gawd rewarded 'em.... You'll get your reward if you do right'" (166-67). Moreover, the men particularly admire a circular that depicts two trains, one headed for Hell and the other for Heaven. The first, "TH E EVERLASTING DAMNATION RAILWAY CORPORATION," advertised as "the Quickest and Shortest Route to the Hottest Depths of HELL," makes stops not just at the predictable "Murderer's Gap" and "Atheistville," but also at "Radical Hill," "Thomas Paine Avenue," and "Communist Junction" (162), thus clearly aligning any attempt at radical change to the status quo with soulimperiling evil. The second, "THE SALVATION AND REDEMPTION RAILWAY COMPANY," as one would expect, stops at "Sacrifice Harbor," "Temperanceville," and "Honesty Line," thus diametrically opposing these positive values to the negative values of Communist radicalism, lake and his friends think that the creator of this circular has "'done figgered out every single thing'" and that "'Gawd sure must've been with the guy to make 'im write a thing like that'" (165), statements that clearly indicate their acceptance of these values (although one suspects that they have only adopted the political and economic values, since, despite the fact that the hell-bound tr ain stops at "Prostitution Boulevard," their after-hours destination is a cathouse).

Jake never manages to see the problems inherent in his uncritical belief in capitalist bootstraps ideology or to form any kind of meaningful community or interpersonal relationship that would help him to overcome his overwhelming sense of alienation. Indeed, the novel's last section, "Rats' Alley," begins with an epigraph from Eliot's The Waste Land, and it describes a scene as bleak and empty as any in that high-modernist poem. Despite his already large debts, Jake goes another hundred dollars in the hole so that he can finance a night out with his cohorts and play the big-spending high-roller he so idealizes. Jake and his friends cavort and dance with a group of prostitutes "with an obvious exaggeration of motion" (195) in an attempt to distract themselves from their alienation and their emptiness. Wright further underscores the false promises of popular culture: "The music caroled its promise of an unattainable satisfaction and lured him to a land where boundaries receded with each step he took" (203). Wri ght's description here clearly recalls the Sisyphean staircase that opens the novel and points out the impossibility of Jake's ever achieving the kind of success he desires. Even the fleshly pleasures that the house should offer often seem instead like pain. As Blanche, a prostitute that Jake picks up, dances in "orgiastic agony," "a thin black woman grabbed her boy friend and bit his ear till blood came" (205). When, in mid-dance, Blanche tells Jake, "'That's murder, Papa,'" he replies, "'I want to be electrocuted'" (203). Moreover, even this ambiguous sensation turns out to be inauthentic, an empty ruse; Blanche only dances with him so that her partner can pick his pocket. When Jake stumbles drunkenly home and finds that Lil has fallen asleep kneeling in prayer, he assaults her; Lil must stab him in the head with a piece of glass in order to stop his attack. Wright leaves Jake sinking into unconsciousness, circled with "fumes of darkness," feeling like "a black whirlpool was sucking him under," as "outside an icy wind swept around the corner of the building, whining and moaning like an idiot in a deep black pit" (219).