A Rube Comes to Harlem
King Solomon Gillis may have the name of the wisest figure in the Old Testament and he may have arrived in New York because he is in flight after killing a man, but he’s still a rube from the south. He didn’t fall off a turnip truck, maybe, but it close enough. He arrived in Harlem courtesy of his ride on a subway which is described in terms only a newbie just looking to be plucked would think:
“he felt as if he had been caught up in the jaws of a steam-shovel, jammed together with other helpless lumps of dirt, swept blindly along for a time and at last abruptly dumped.”
No, Just Plain Harlem
see another black face. Harlem: where a black man is safe because numbers ensure his rights are violated like back home in Dixie. Yes sir, if you are a black man on the run for killing a white man, Harlem is more than just a part of New York, Gillis thinks:
“Done died an’ woke up in Heaven.”
The Voice of Authority
Most of the characters in the story are black. Notably, the two plainclothes detectives who play a role are white. The author uses a metaphor effectively to convey the idea of power and authority of white men in Harlem even before they identify themselves as cops:
“…when one of them spoke to Tony, it was in a husky, toneless, blowing voice, like the sound of a dirty phonograph record.”
Racism
Racism runs rampant in Harlem and not just between whites and blacks. Black on black prejudice is a minor theme pursued primarily through racial epithets revealing the distinction of differences. One tense scene in the story is a showdown between Mouse and Gillis with a man speaking in a Jamaican accent. Mouse uses Harlem slang as metaphor both for denigrating the man’s West Indian national derivation and in place of a swear to God:
“I’ll be john-browned if there’s a monkeychaser in Harlem can gyp him if I know it, see?”
Descent to the Underworld
The story comes to a climax in a smoky cabaret in a scene where Heaven collapses entirely for Gillis. He is being arrested after being set up by Mouse, but he barely even notices because his attention has been focused across the club on the white man escorting the girl of his dreams; a scene which comes to vivid life in completing the metaphorical vision of Harlem becoming a hellish nightmare:
“Consciousness of what was happening between the pair across the room suddenly broke through Gillis’ daze like a flame through smoke.”
