Go Tell It on the Mountain

Gabriel is the novel’s antagonist. His private cruelty and his abusive personality are contrasted with his public reputation as a charismatic and caring man of God. Gabriel was not always as religious as he appears to his adopted son John. As seen through the characters’ recollections, Gabriel grew up in the deeply segregated and discriminatory American South at the beginning of the 20th century. During this time, African Americans were persecuted for their race by white Americans. As such, Gabriel grew to hate white people. As a young man, he drank heavily and chased after women. After his sister’s departure from the south and as his mother became very sick, he found religion. Gabriel became a renowned preacher, but he was not able to leave behind his raucous past. The racial discrimination of the time could also not be escaped. He married Deborah, a local African American woman who was known in her community because a group of white men brutally raped her when she was young. Gabriel, believing that he will father a line of blessed children, marries this supposedly disgraced woman as a demonstration of his piety. Deborah is a survivor of racism and sexual violence, but Gabriel treats her status as a demonstration of his own faith. Publicly, Gabriel marries Deborah to demonstrate the strength of her faith. In private, he cheats on her and resents her. Gabriel may hate the society which considers him as a second-class citizen, but his arrogance and his narcissism eventually destroy the lives of both Deborah and Esther. Both women die after being loved by Gabriel, who simply packs his bags and moves north to continue his career as a religious man.

In New York, Gabriel meets Elizabeth. Though she has a son by another man, he agrees to marry her and raise John as his own. Gabriel satisfies this promise in name but not in spirit. He maintains the pretense in public that John is his son but in private he is cold and abusive toward John. Like Deborah, he marries Elizabeth as a way to shine his own glory upon another person. All the while, he grows to resent Elizabeth and John as much as he resented Deborah. The divide between Gabriel’s public displays of religion and his private cruelty illustrate his hypocrisy. He claims to be a devout and religious man but, in truth, he is bitter, cruel, and self-serving. His sister Florence threatens to expose his hypocrisy at the end of the novel. She promises to tell Elizabeth the truth about his illegitimate son. Ultimately, she threatens to make public the contradictions and sins which Gabriel has kept private for his entire life. Only by making Gabriel’s private truths public knowledge can Florence bring some resolution to her brother’s lifetime of cruel behavior. 

Elizabeth has endured many tragedies in her life. After losing her mother, she is taken away from her father by an austere, mean aunt. Then, when she escapes her home and to live with her lover Richard, he dies by suicide after being racially abused by the police. Furthermore, Richard leaves her as an unmarried and pregnant woman who is forced to raise her son John alone. Gabriel promises to love Elizabeth and to raise John as though he were John’s real father, though he eventually proves to be a cold, distant, and abusive father. At each turn, Elizabeth’s hopes and dreams are dashed and the cruel tragedy of the world comes to define her.

Despite the tragedies in her life, Elizabeth revolves to live a religious life. Even though she loved Richard, she feared that he was a godless man, and she disliked his lack of spirituality. She wanted to save Richard by marrying him and making him a good Christian, but he was taken from her before she could make this happen. As such, the prospect of marrying Gabriel offered Elizabeth the chance to share her religion with a husband. She was delighted that a religious man like Gabriel would offer to save her from her misery, but she quickly discovered that Gabriel was not as pious and as caring as he presented himself to be. Gabriel emotionally and physically abuses Elizabeth and her children but—after a lifetime of tragedies—she does not even contemplate leaving him. Instead, she becomes a withdrawn and austere presence. John describes how she never laughs and how her face always appears sullen and tired. Elizabeth gives up on a brighter future and resolves to raise her children as best she can.

Potential salvation for Elizabeth exists in the form of Deborah’s letter to Florence. The letter reveals that Gabriel fathered an illegitimate child during his first marriage. By revealing this to the world, Florence can provide a release in Elizabeth’s life. Elizabeth has guarded so many secrets for so long that her optimism has been crushed. By freeing the pent-up truth and the myriad secrets in their lives, Florence could allow Elizabeth to vent her frustrations. At the end of the novel, Elizabeth is happy that John has found God, but she cries because of her frustrations and the past tragedies that mark her life. By revealing her husband’s hypocrisy and showing his cruelty to the world, Florence’s letter has the power to bring some kind of optimism or relief back into Elizabeth’s life. 

Florence is Gabriel’s oldest sister. She does not like her brother, and she was raised in a household where her younger brother’s preferential treatment made her grow to resent him. Her mother Rachel would always give Gabriel more food and better clothes, even allowing him to have an education that was denied to Florence. Rachel justified this preferential treatment by saying that Florence would grow up to marry a man and become a housewife, therefore she did not need to be well-fed or educated. Florence disagreed and, when she was old enough, she moved north to New York to escape her mother’s malign influence. Her freedom in New York did not provide the happiness she wanted. The opportunities for an African American woman were not as forthcoming as she expected and, though she married a man named Frank, her husband was an abject influence in her life. Frank drank too much and argued with her frequently. Eventually, he ran away with another woman and then died in World War I, leaving Florence alone once again. Throughout her life, she is treated badly by her mother, her brother, her husband, and her society.

Florence tries to reclaim some agency over her life as she approaches death. She tries to redress her spiritual needs by going to her brother’s church. Though she fears that she will not be able to save her soul, she wants to at least try to show her faith in God, even though the events of her life have cast doubt in her mind. More practically, she can gain revenge upon her brother. She has a letter from her friend Esther which reveals that Gabriel fathered an illegitimate son and, at the end of the novel, she tells Gabriel that she will tell Elizabeth and others about his hypocrisy. Having spent a lifetime listening to how Gabriel is the preferred child and a respected religious figure, she wants to hold Gabriel accountable for his sins. Florence becomes the arbiter of justice. She can deliver revenge for the hypocrisy, the cruelty, and the abuse that Gabriel has inflicted. After a lifetime of being treated badly, Florence approaches death with an opportunity to turn this ill treatment around and achieve some form of closure.