Power to Undo Sin: Race, History and Literary Blackness in Rilla Askew's Fire in Beulah, The

Japeth appears to be something of a village idiot, yet he is keen and murderous. His grotesque and unwanted birth, witnessed by Althea, seems to have shaped his insightful but violent attitude toward life. He has borne a life-long grudge against his sister that has now become even more pronounced as he envies her and those of her new social status. He appears at the ball with his face painted half white and half black, wearing a noose around his neck. His presence effectively ends the party, suggesting the truth of hidden activities now graphically signified for the guests. Japheth is manipulative and murderous, but ironically, throughout the novel he speaks the truth, scoffing at would-be moralists and hypocritical socialites who he knows practice legally-justified thievery and tacit communal lynching. Given the history of a society where individual ownership of land is foreign to Natives and where the signing of papers is silly at best, and signifies betrayal and violence at its worst, Japheth 's role is constructive as a source of irritation to the powerful money people who of course document their business transactions on paper. His voice questions the morality of the legal practices because he knows that the laws are made by those who have financial interests in subduing the non-white population. Askew's vision of the tension between law and morality is somewhat similar to McCarthy's Blood Meridian, where the use of documentation graphically signifies the oppressive legal style of Judge Holden and the representatives of supposed civilization to justify and legalize the otherwise brutal actions that accompany the conquest of territory. Askew's truth-speaking monster, Japheth, exposes the facade of the civilizing process that has governed too much of frontier history.The ugly past cannot be ignored, especially when it portends potential for future unrest.

The use of the grotesque magnifies the concerns of the novel, effectively demonstrating the implied logical conclusions of latent racism that at any time could resort to lynching if a situation were deemed worthy on the part of the mainstream majority. Concerning the role of the grotesque in fiction, Cassuto writes:

The grotesque is a threat to the system of knowledge by virtue of its liminal position within that system. This liminality demands resolution; for a human being caught between the categories of human and thing, the pressure will be exerted toward a return to the human category, for that is the only choice that offers the possibility of resolution, (qtd. in Thomson 2002, 296)

In Ernest Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying (1993), the grotesque element concerns Jefferson's self-appropriation, literally as a hog on the jail floor asking for corn, thereby reducing himself to the level where his accusers have placed him. The grotesque in Fire in Beulah is more dramatic, but no less dehumanizing Japheth's staging of a lynching effectively signifies both means and end to the audience because of the Jim Crow society whose collective citizenry failed to consistently denounce lynching, and whose customs implied that lynching might serve as a viable means of control, a constant threat to blacks and other outsiders. As historical accounts confirm, Askew s novel suggests that lynching often functioned, at least subliminally, as carnivalistic sideshows because of the victims' perceived lack of humanity. In "Anatomy of an Oklahoma Lynching." Lowell Blaisdell writes: "One concept holds that poorer whites obtained social gratification from the pursuit of a person lower on the social scale than themselves. Another is that the lack of amusements or variety in early-twentieth-century rural conditions . . . gave impetus to extralegal killings as a species of entertainment" (2001, 301). 12 Interestingly, one of Althea's few redeeming qualities seems evident, at least potentially, early in the novel when she is distressed at the notions of lynching. Her view contrasts with that of her socialite friend who relishes the carnival atmosphere and who was a gleeful observer of Japheth s costume at the ball.