If Beale Street Could Talk Literary Elements

Protest Novel, Social Problem Novel, Romance, Coming-of-Age

"If Beale Street Could Talk" takes place in 1970s New York City and Puerto Rico. The Rivers and Hunt families live in Harlem, which is in Uptown Manhattan. Fonny’s jail, “the Tombs” is in Downtown Manhattan, near Wall Street. Fonny’s Bank Street Apartment is also downtown. The setting of this novel affects the characters as they traverse different kinds of social codes and threatening situations depending on the environment they are in. Harlem, a historically Black neighborhood, offers safety to the Rivers and Hunt families in a way that Downtown Manhattan does not. Tish thinks at the beginning of the novel, “If I ever get out of this, if we ever get out of this, I swear I’ll never set foot in Downtown New York again” (9).

Tish is the narrator of the novel. She is nineteen, and she serves as a deeply empathetic and perceptive narrator. Trudier Harris, in "The Eye as a Weapon in If Beale Street Could Talk," notes that "Tish's innocence, along with her natural abilities at perception, draw the reader into the story and encourage empathy with her." She is a sensible narrator, and she doesn't let the troubles of her life destroy her. This, in turn, lifts the characters of the novels up while endowing their stories with complexity and room to breathe. In this way, even though "Beale Street" is Tish's story, she is not self-centered. She allows all of her characters, even characters she disagrees with or abhors, like Mrs. Rogers and Officer Bell, room to speak. Tish is the only female narrator in Baldwin's writing.

Most of the time, Tish's point-of-view is first-person limited; however, there are many points throughout the novel (Fonny and Daniel's conversations and Sharon's trip to Puerto Rico, for example) where her point-of-view becomes omniscient.

Even though the events of "If Beale Street Could Talk" cause incredible strain on the protagonists, Tish's voice is filled with enough hope, love, and survival that she does not sink under. According to Marlene Mosher in "James Baldwin's Blues," Tish's voice communicates the spirit of the blues, which is characterized by "surviving despite tremendous odds." Mosher also relates what it means to have a blues voice: "To communicate through the blues, one must be honest and one must also have suffered deeply." Lynn Orilla Scott agrees with Mosher in "James Baldwin's Later Fiction." She notes that "Tish tells of love and loss in, for the most part, simple, straightforward language. Her narrative has moments of dark humor and demonstrates the blues as a style of resistance, a way of getting through, of transforming trouble into a spirit of resilience."

Throughout the novel, Tish's tone is lamenting and yet hopeful. She is able to hold these opposing feelings in her head with no trouble at all. This is evidenced by the scene in which Tish and Fonny have sex for the first time. Tish describes the scene: "It was like nothing was happening in the world but us. I was not afraid. It was deeper than fear. I could not take my eyes away from his. I could not move. If it was deeper than fear, it was not yet joy. It was wonder" (75).

The protagonists of the novel are the Rivers family. The antagoinsts are the racist society that criminalize African Americans, as well as Mrs. Hunt, Adrienne, and Sheila, who despise Tish for getting pregnant out of wedlock and Fonny for being and acting too "black."

One of the major conflicts of the novel is Mrs. Hunt and the sisters versus the Rivers family. The Rivers family wants and intends to advocate for Fonny in his time of need while Mrs. Hunt wants to skirt that responsibility as Fonny's mother. At the "summit meeting" in the Rivers' home, the Rivers and Hunts (minus Frank) get into a fight and they end on bad terms with each other. Another conflict of the novel is the Rivers family (especially Tish) fighting against the institutional racism (represented by New York City neighborhoods, Officer Bell, and the racist schooling system) that works to push African Americans down and, more specifically, keeps Fonny in jail even though he does not deserve to be there.

The climax of the novel occurs in the middle after Tish visits Fonny and he is upset about Mrs. Rogers leaving the United States. In this part of the book, the sections get shorter and the sentences become more clipped. In a specific moment, Tish tosses and turns in her bed and has a terrible dream about Fonny going down a dangerous path. This dream is evidence of the heightened emotion at this part of the book, an emotion that threatens to pull Tish under.

On a large scale, Daniel's story, in which he is falsely accused of carjacking, foreshadows Fonny's own arrest. A specific instance of foreshadowing is when Tish is talking about how Fonny's art saved him. She alludes to his arrest but doesn't spell it out in detail until later in the novel: "And if you're nobody's nigger, you're a bad nigger: and that's what the cops decided when Fonny moved downtown" (38).

Tish alludes to Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" when explaining how her community responded to her relationship with Fonny: "At school, and all up and down the block, they called us Romeo and Juliet, though this was not because they'd read the play" (18).

Additionally, Ernestine calls Tish "Jezebel," which is a reference to the Hebrew Bible. Jezebel was married to Ahab, the king of Israel, but was despised by the nation of Israel and the Prophet Elijah for worshipping idols.

Tish demonstrates paradox when explaining Mrs. Hunt and Fonny's sisters' opinion of her: "In one way, I realized later, they didn't think that I was good enough for Fonny—which really means that they didn't think I was good enough for them—and in another way, they felt that I was maybe just exactly what Fonny deserved" (18). In this passage, Tish holds two opposing ideas equally in her mind, which, in a way, shows the senselessness of Mrs. Hunt and the sisters' opinion of her.

As a narrator, Tish uses parallelism to compare Daniel's struggle with the law to Fonny's struggle. Both men have similar trouble with the law: they are falsely accused, picked out of a lineup, and their cases are manipulated by the D.A. so that it is harder for them to find justice. The fact that Daniel and Fonny's stories are so similar underscores the pervasiveness of this fate for men in the black community, even when they have different life paths and come from different backgrounds.

Tish uses metonymy when she refers to the jail Fonny is housed in as "the Tombs." This is the colloquial name for the Manhattan Detention Complex jail in Lower Manhattan.

Tish personifies emotions during the "summit meeting" between the Rivers and Hunt families: "Then real hatred choked off the air. Something bottomless occurred which had nothing to do with what seemed to be occurring in the room" (71).