Seven Guitars

“The Bible say some things ain’t for you to know. It say you know neither the day nor the hour when death come.” 

As the characters grapple with the idea that death can arrive at any moment, Vera tries to accept this possibility by ascribing it to a part of a larger plan. Floyd’s death is sudden and purposeless, and Vera wants to infuse it with meaning, even if that meaning is only known to God.

“I believe every man knows something, but most times they don’t pay attention to it.” 

Red shares the mildly comforting idea that death doesn’t come without warning, but the warning is often cryptic or overlooked. This predicts the sign that Floyd sees and overlooks, when Hedley kills the rooster, foreshadowing how he will kill Floyd. Despite Hedley’s escalating behavior, when Hedley attacks Floyd, Floyd walks away and turns his back. Hedley surprises him because although Floyd claims that he’s willing to risk everything, as the characters demonstrate, it’s human nature to reject the idea of one’s own inevitable death.

“He told the judge I threatened to burn down the jailhouse. The judge ain’t even asked me about it. He give me ninety days for worthlessness. Say Rockefeller worth a million dollars and you ain’t worth two cents.” 

Although Floyd isn’t always the most reliable narrator and tends to spin retellings to his advantage, his story about his arrest and incarceration lines up with the story Canewell tells about being arrested in Chicago for laziness. For the Black men in the play, White police are a pervasive threat. They have the power to erase African Americans with little or no recourse by operating underneath the law by killing or arresting them. This contributes to Floyd’s need to fight back and assert his own legacy.

“Seem like everybody in the world in Chicago. That’s the only place for a Black man to be.” 

Floyd romanticizes Chicago, remembering the city as a place where he was treated like a man. He saw Muddy Waters perform and was mesmerized, realizing that he could follow in his footsteps. Although Floyd might be waxing on about Chicago as part of his attempt to convince Vera to join him, he also seems to believe that the city is as utopian as he claims. The more desperate Floyd grows in his efforts to get there, the more the city seems to mean to him.

“You had what you want and I didn’t. That makes you special. You one of them special people who is supposed to have everything just the way they want it. […] I wanted to be that for you. I wanted to know where you was bruised at. So I could be a woman for you. So I could touch you there. So I could spread myself all over you and know that I was a woman. That I could give a man only those things a woman has to give. And he could be satisfied. How much woman you think it make you feel to know you can’t satisfy a man?” 

Vera recognizes that Floyd is special, and that because of this, he doesn’t understand the pain of losing love and being left. She describes the gender dynamics in the play that are apparent throughout the rest of the character relationships. The play is centered on the idea of frustrated Black masculinity and asserting manhood, which takes a toll on the women who are called upon to confirm their masculinity. Since Floyd relied on Vera to make him feel like a successful man, he saw his lingering insecurities as proof that she hadn’t done enough. Floyd’s leaving Vera made her feel like less of a woman because, like Floyd, she defines the interrelationship of men and women as mutually affirming.

“Everybody got a time coming. Nobody can say that they don’t have a time coming. My father have his time. And his father have his time. Hedley is fifty-nine years old. His time come soon enough. I’m not worried about that.” 

Hedley is facing certain death if he doesn’t seek treatment for his tuberculosis. But unlike the other characters in the play, he doesn’t express apprehension of dying. His father died due to lack of medical treatment as a Black man, and Hedley refuses to go to the same medical system to ask for help. Through his dreams and his preoccupation with the Bible, Hedley, who agreed with Vera that there were angels at Floyd’s funeral, seems to believe that life doesn’t end with death.

“Every time I look up, somebody’s dying. If they ain’t dying from one thing, they dying from another. I done known six or seven men that got killed. That’s why I say I wonder when’s my time. Seems like I’m lucky to still be alive.” 

After hearing about another man who has died in the community, Canewell describes what he sees as the constant presence of death. Canewell is aware of his own vulnerability as a poor Black man and tries to avoid taking risks. He is surprised when Floyd threatens him with a gun at the end of the play, but he responds by backing off unlike Floyd, who fights back when Hedley goes after his money.

“Hey… hey, tell him, Floyd. Jesus ain’t had no business raising Lazarus from the dead. If it’s God’s will, then what he look like undoing it? If it’s his father’s work, then it’s his father’s business and he ought to have stayed out of it.” 

Canewell’s argument with Hedley about Lazarus alludes to the forces of fate that will ultimately lead to Floyd’s death. Hedley contends that raising Lazarus was part of God’s will, suggesting that divine and omnipotent forces cannot be thwarted, even under the illusion of free will. Canewell also foreshadows Floyd’s death, which occurs when Hedley believes that Floyd is interfering in his business between him and his own father by withholding the money.

“That’s what the problem is now. Everybody keep their trunk packed up. Time you put two and two together and try to come up with four… they out the door.” 

From her relationship with Floyd, Vera has learned to be wary of men who will leave without warning. Vera is wrestling with the question as to whether she should give Floyd another chance and go to Chicago, but she is also aware that he is ready to go and might leave her again if she doesn’t figure out their relationship. Later, Canewell will tell Floyd that Vera prefers a quiet life to an exciting one in the city. But Vera chooses the risk of passion with Floyd over stability with Canewell.

“Talking about love. People don’t know what love is. Love be anything they want it to be.” 

Louise is jaded about love. She sees Vera letting Floyd back into her life, even after hurting her, because she loves him. Louise imagines that the drama and murder surrounding Ruby’s affairs means that Ruby is even more romantic about love. But Louise understands what love means in a relationship over time. In her marriage, it meant giving herself to him to use only for her husband to decide that he needed to look for more after twelve years. Louise sees love as the precursor to pain.

“I believe Floyd means well. He just don’t know how to do. Everything keep slipping out his hands. Seem like he stumble over everything.” 

Vera’s optimism about Floyd is countered by Louise’s pessimism. While, as Vera says, Floyd does run into what seems like more than his fair share of obstacles, the question as to whether Floyd means well is a matter of interpretation. He is certainly driven by his own ambition and self-interest. He seems to legitimately love Vera but has hurt her before and might do it again. Floyd is morally complex. He might just be a smooth-talker, or he might truly believe what he says. The play leaves him morally ambiguous, eventually dying an unearned death.

“What I’m trying to tell you is, don’t let no man use you up and then talk about he gotta go. Shoot him first.”

After Louise’s husband abandoned her, she kept his shoes and razor right where he left them behind. They stand as a reminder, occupying her house so she doesn’t allow another man to move in. Louise jokes that Vera ought to shoot a man who leaves after taking what he wants, but the purpose of her joke is to advise Vera that such a man should not have the ability to return and take more from her.

“What kind of sense that make? Paper or no paper, they still owe me the money.”

Floyd spent three months laboring in a prison workhouse and is owed a minimal amount of money for his work. Having lost the paperwork needed to claim his money is one of the many obstacles that Floyd encounters in raising the funds to go to Chicago. Floyd’s indignance and sense of injustice is understandable. His ninety days of labor aren’t erased without the paperwork, and he is still entitled to be paid for his work.

“Yes, the Bible say Ethiopia shall rise up and be made a great kingdom. Marcus Garvey say the Black man is a king.” 

When Red tells the men that his wife has named his son Mister, Hedley sees this as a rightful claim to power. This response becomes clear when Hedley reveals that his own first name is King. Hedley believes that there is a great inheritance for Black men who stand against oppression, claiming their own birthright to be kings among men.

“This here rooster born in the barnyard. He learn to cock his doodle-do. He see the sun, he cry out so the sun don’t catch you with your hand up your ass or your dick stuck in your woman. You hear this rooster you know you alive. You be glad to see the sun cause there come a time sure enough when you see your last day and this rooster you don’t hear no more. […] Your Black ass be dead like the rooster now. You mark what Hedley say.” 

According to Hedley, the rooster was warning the men and keeping them alive. He was waking them up and alerting them instead of letting them fall prey to distractions. Red and Canewell have both settled into their lives, seeking contentment and pleasure while avoiding any risk. They’ve been ignoring the call of the rooster. Floyd is the one who is in danger, allowing himself to be blind to the danger posed by the world in which he is trying to achieve success. Floyd isn’t using the White men at the record label. He’s allowing them to use him in hopes that they will pay him what is due, despite the constant evidence to the contrary.

“You are like a king! They look at you and they say, ‘This one… this one is the pick of the litter. This one we have to watch. We gonna put a mark on this one. This one we have to crush down like the elephant crush the lion!’ You watch your back! The White man got a big plan against you. Don’t help him with his plan.” 

Hedley tries, once again, to warn Floyd, but his message becomes complicated by abstractions. Floyd believes that the White men who want to produce his record are trying to lift him up so they can all profit from his talent. But Hedley sees White men the same way Louise sees all men. They see a talented Black man and want to drain him, use everything he has, with no regard to what is left afterwards. The record label could have given Floyd money to travel. Since they didn’t, Floyd will either never make it or arrive broken and desperate for the opportunity. Either way, Floyd will have no power.

“Wherever you go you got to carry you with you. You ain’t gonna all of a sudden be a different person just cause you in a different city. You can put that out your head right now.” 

Louise tries to warn Vera that no matter how much Floyd extols the virtues of Chicago, neither of them will be different people there. Floyd will be the same man who left her for his own ambition. If Vera wasn’t enough for him before, she will not become enough just because they are in Chicago.

“The problem with Elmore was he could never get enough of me. He used to tell me he wanted to take it all so nobody else could have me. He wasn’t gonna leave none for nobody else to hear him tell it. That make you feel funny to be with a man who want to use you up like that.” 

Although Ruby is the youngest character in the play, she has obtained the life experience to have become the most world-weary about love. When Ruby first enters, the other characters notice her sexual magnetism right away and the men start trying to curry her favor. Her responses to the men throughout the play suggest that Ruby is accustomed to sexual attention and has likely had men sexualizing and lusting for her since puberty. Ruby has to leave town to escape Elmore after he kills her boyfriend. Her body empowers her at times, but men also target her for abuse.

“Everything is a plot against the Black man to Hedley.” 

Canewell ridicules Hedley’s obsession with the racial imbalance in society because Hedley expresses his fixation through long speeches that don’t maintain the lines between metaphors and the literal, or reality and delusion. But Hedley’s rants reveal that he is constantly, unrelentingly aware of anti-Black oppression. The other characters cope with their social status, living in an insulated Black community while also recognizing when racism encroaches on their lives. Hedley’s inability to cope makes him more and more unstable over the course of the play.

“Her man got a hit record but he ain’t got no hit record money. If you had listened to me…” 

Unlike Floyd, Canewell has never had the potential to become famous. When he walked out of Floyd’s first recording session, Canewell’s personal loss was minimal while Floyd sees this event as ending his recording session and his first shot at stardom. Canewell reminds Floyd that he ought to have demanded what he is worth. But Floyd is afraid of giving the record label any reason to decide to write him off. It’s easy for Canewell to advise from his own vantage point where there is very little at stake for him.

“My mama ain’t had two dimes to rub together. And ain’t had but one stick. She got to do without the fire. Some kind of warmth in her life. I don’t want to live in a cold house. It’s a cold world, let me have a little shelter from it. That’s all I want. Floyd Barton is gonna make his record. Floyd Barton is going to Chicago.” 

After learning that his manager is a scam artist, Floyd declares that he will do whatever is necessary to make it to Chicago. His mother died poor, and her grave is slowly becoming lost in the cemetery. She had no relief or respite from the hard life of poverty. Floyd isn’t willing to live if he can’t have something better. He buys his mother a tombstone because he can’t help her in life, but he can at least make her death less anonymous.

“You need a license for everything. You need a license to fish in the river. The dog need a license. You need a license to sing on the street. You need a license to sell peanuts. Soon, you mark my words, soon you need a license to walk down the street.” 

Throughout the play, Red seems to feel caged in by his life. His wife has had another baby, who she named without his input. He wants to live free from hassle while pursuing as many women as possible. When Vera mentions that Mrs. Tillery had been ordered to get a license for her dog, Red sees this as one more indication of their lives being limited and regulated. Earlier in the play, Canewell explains his arrest in Chicago, which began with him playing music and putting his hat out for tips or soliciting without a license. Requiring licensing for activities that were once free is a way to extract more money from their pockets while creating more illegal actions that might make them subject to arrest.

“How come the police is the only one who always shoot straight? Everybody else miss. They may as well not even bother to shoot.” 

Canewell reads a newspaper account of the robbery in which gunfire was exchanged but Mrs. Tillery’s son was the only one shot and killed. Although he is joking, Canewell’s quip highlights the imbalanced nature of a gun fight between police and civilians. The men who robbed the loan office were running away, shooting wildly as they tried to escape. The police, trained to shoot, were able to hold their ground and aim properly. And of course, had they succeeded in shooting a police officer, the men would have simply been signing their own death warrants if they were caught.