84 pages • 2 hours read
James BaldwinGo Tell It on the Mountain
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1953A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
The Threshing Floor
The threshing floor is a part of The Temple of the Fire Baptized. The name refers to the space in front of the altar where Gabriel delivers his sermons. The name is a reference to the laborious process of processing wheat as described in the Bible. In the past, the lack of farming machinery meant that wheat was to be harvested by hand and that the grain and the chaff of the wheat had to be separated by hand. To do so, people required a large, flat surface which was shielded from the wind on which the wheat could be laid out. Once laid out, people would walk oxen back and forth over the wheat. The threshing floor in the church is a symbol of the way the members of the congregation feel themselves treated like the wheat described in the Bible. They use the threshing floor to share their experiences of religion. Like the wheat, which was processed on the threshing floor, they are processed by religion and transformed into something new. The threshing floor becomes a symbol of the physical transformation that religion induces in the congregation and the seriousness with which they take the process.
The members of the congregation treat the threshing floor with reverence, believing that it holds God’s power and spirit. They believe that they can be saved by God and that their sins can be redeemed; giving themselves up to the threshing floor is a symbolic part of this process. Elisha is a key example of how the threshing floor functions. During Gabriel’s service, Elisha feels overcome by the power of God, and he steps out onto the threshing floor. He begins to speak in tongues and writhes about in a physical manner. Once on the threshing floor, he embraces the power of God and performs this power for everyone to see. Elizabeth lacks Elisha’s conviction. She steps out onto the threshing floor and wants to be forgiven for her sins, such as giving birth to John outside of marriage. But Elizabeth believes in the symbolic power of the threshing floor. As such, she doubts herself and the conviction of her confession. Her self-doubt interacts with the symbolic power of the threshing floor, and she produces a much less physical reaction than Elisha or other members of the congregation. Because the threshing floor is such a powerful symbol of redemption and because the characters are so invested in this symbolic power, the threshing floor can expose their self-doubts as well as the conviction of their belief.
At the end of the novel, John steps onto the threshing floor, and he is so overcome that he collapses into unconsciousness. The tension in his mind wrestles with his investment in the threshing floor as a symbol. He fears that his sexuality makes him a sinner, and he worries that he will never win the love of Gabriel. This tension combines with the symbolic power of the threshing floor to overwhelm him. He slips into a trance which lasts for hours, only returning to consciousness when he believes that he has caught a glimpse of God. John feels relieved after his vision because he believes in the power of the threshing floor. He has offered himself up for judgment, and he believes that he has been forgiven for his sins. John’s positive reaction to his experience hints at the tragedy that lies in the future. He has not resolved his sexual urges nor has he learned the truth about his father. Instead, he has performed a symbolic act which serves as a temporary fix for deeper issues.
Hymns and Music
Hymns and music perform a vital role in Go Tell it on the Mountain. The prose of the novel is interspersed with fragments of traditional African American songs and hymns, to the point where the title of the book is taken from one such song. These songs symbolize morality and religion, while other examples of music also represent an aversion to a particular kind of morality. The religious songs represent the strive toward spiritual purity that drives the characters. The songs call out to God to help purify and cleanse the singer of their sins, and the act of singing is a physical demonstration of a desire to be closer to God. Even someone like Florence, who has not been to a church in decades and who has forgotten how to pray, cannot forget how to sing these songs. Her mother’s favorite songs are still imprinted on her memory long after Rachel has died.
Similarly, John was born and raised in and around the church. The songs have been a part of his life for as long as he can remember. Just as his father’s status as a preacher is an important part of his inner religious turmoil, John feels the pressure that the songs place on him to cleanse his soul and atone for his apparently sinful behavior. John sings reluctantly in the church as he is worried that he is a sinner. That he sings at all, however, symbolizes his desire to achieve a oneness with God, even if he is fearful for his soul. The personal relationship that John and Florence share with these songs shows how the music functions as more than just pretty sounds. The hymns and music performed in the church has a deeply symbolic religious meaning which represents the characters’ own struggles with religion.
Gospel, hymns, and other religious music represents morality and purity, but the characters are aware that this is not the only kind of music. Secular music such as jazz or the blues is considered to symbolize immorality and sin. The patrons who pour out of the bars in Harlem as John walks to church are people who do not sing hymns. They are people who listen to jazz until the early hours of the morning. Their choice of music symbolizes their desire to live a sinful lifestyle. Similarly, John associates the blues with the sex workers that he notices in the neighborhood. Florence shares John’s perspective in this regard. She sees her husband Frank as a sinful man, and she notes that he enjoys the blues, associating this preference for a certain type of music with Frank’s immorality. To Florence, jazz and the blues are symbols of an innate immorality.
The Mountain
Mountains symbolize the difficulty faced by the characters. The title of the novel is borrowed from a traditional song in which the singer implores the audience to spread the word of God as far as they can. The mountain is an important part of the song because it represents the difficult terrain which lays ahead, even for faithful people. The singer tells the audience to spread the word of God on the mountain, knowing that the tall, narrow mountain is a more difficult environment. In the same way, the society the characters of Go Tell it on the Mountain inhabit is hostile to their presence. They commit to living spiritual, moral lives even though they live in a world where their race makes them a target for hatred, violence, and discrimination. The mountain is a symbol of the struggle in their lives: they commit to being good Christians in a bad world as an act of defiance, embracing the difficulty because doing so will elevate the glory of God.
References to mountains and terrain are also scattered throughout the text, symbolizing the challenges that the characters face. When Gabriel is experiencing his religious conversion, his lowest point is illustrated by his belief that he is stuck in a valley which he must escape. He believes that he can escape this valley through the grace of God. Added to this, his mother Rachel lives in a cabin on a mountainside, and he moves up and down the steep terrain each day until he embraces religion. When he descends from her cabin into the village, he commits sins and drinks alcohol. When returning to her cabin, he elevates himself out of the physical and emotional valley, climbing the symbolic mountainside toward redemption. Gabriel’s uphill struggle against his own demons is symbolized by his movement up and down the mountain.
At the beginning of the novel, Gabriel’s adopted son John makes a similar journey. He climbs up a hill in Central Park and uses the elevated position to survey the city. However, John is not in Harlem. He watches the busy white people as they walk in and out of stores which he does not believe he can enter due to the color of his skin. John looks down from the hill and remembers how Gabriel taught him that the white people were marked by their sin. Gabriel has taught his son that the bottom of the mountain—with the stores and the cinemas—is home to sin and immorality. John is curious about his father’s lesson, however, and he feels the need to experience this for himself. He descends the mountain and believes that if he discovers the sinful place his father described to him, then he can return to the summit. John’s defiant journey up and down the slope in Central Park symbolizes his suppressed desire to question his father’s teachings. Gabriel abuses John and treats him badly, making John doubt himself and his faith. His need to experience the bottom of the mountain for himself is a representation of his unspoken rebellion against his father’s cruelty. Even at the end of the novel, as John claims to have found God, Gabriel warns him that he still has a steep mountain to climb. John experiences the symbolic struggle up the mountainside but his relationship with the symbolic mountain shows how his antagonistic relationship with Gabriel will dominate his spiritual journey.
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