“The Discovery of What it means To be An American”
Psychoanalytically, James Baldwin’s resolution to relocate to Paris amounts to avoidance because he postulates that emigrating from America to Europe would be of assistance in eluding ‘’the colour problem’ that was endemic in America where color delimits him.
The American identity cannot be whole without the integration of the European facet. James Baldwin observes, “ no matter where our fathers (the fathers of White American writers and Black American writers) had been born, or what they had endured, the fact of Europe has formed us both , was part of our identity and part of our inheritance.” Here, James Baldwin accentuates the convergence between American and European identities. This recognition affirms that Europeans played an unequivocal role in sculpting the American identity for all the blacks and the whites. Therefore, black Americans cannot proclaim that Europe is not part of their heritage.
Bessie Smith’s records are instrumental in James Baldwin’s pursuit for his identity. James Baldwin confesses, “It was Bessie Smith, through her tone and cadence who helped me to dig back to the way I myself must have spoken when I was a pickanniny, and to remember the things I had heard and seen and felt. I had buried them very deep.” Listening to Bessie Smith, a black, is a regression mechanism that empowers James Baldwin to resolve his antipathy towards blackness. It is comprehensible that James Baldwin had been in denial all along about his blackness, and this had stimulated him to bury all his involvements as a black person in his unconscious. Nevertheless, the records resuscitate his experiences, and aid him to be aware of his irreplaceable identity.
More important, Europe is momentous to James Baldwin since, “the freedom that the American writer find in Europe brings him full circle, back to himself, with the responsibility for his development where it always was: in his own hands.” The feeling of autonomy permits Baldwin to apprehend that his identity is under his superintendence. Arguably, if Baldwin has not changed his environment, still his writing career would have been subdued by the American environment which does not uphold the writers’ freedom.
“The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy”
Norman is a component of James Baldwin’s symbolic self-completion. James Baldwin writes, “I was aware of new and warm presence in my life, for I had met someone I wanted to know, who wanted to know me.” The mutuality of Norman and Baldwin’s feelings validates that they are compatible notwithstanding of their racial and religious variances. Norman’s influence confirms that Baldwin is not the same man who felt “ isolated from Negroes as I was from whites” (“The Discovery of What it means To be An American”). Accordingly, Norman is a fundamental emblem in perfecting Baldwin’s Self.
However, James Baldwin appeals to self-regulation because he hesitates letting Norman fully into his life. James Baldwin confesses, “I was not going to come out crawling out of my ruined house, all bloody, o baby, sing no ad songs for me. And the gap between Norma’s state and my own had a terrible effect on our relationship, for it inevitably connected, not to say collided, with the myth of the sexuality of Negroes which Norman, like so many others refuse to give up.” Here, James Baldwin reveals the power of sexuality on inter-racial interactions. Sexuality myths, relating to the blacks, are injurious to the prospering of Baldwin and Norman’s friendship. Consequently, James Baldwin is conscious about his bond with Norman because he is concerned that Norman could use the sexuality mythos to offend him. James Baldwin disregards self-disclosure for the reason that it would bare his foremost vulnerability in the event that Norman Mailer would elect to use the sexuality against James Baldwin.
James Baldwin burns out in the course of striving to be a proficient writer. His breakdown manifests in the activities that he indulges in such as drinking, instead of finishing his manuscripts. He writes about the “ point at which many artists lose their minds, or commit suicide or throw themselves into good works, or try to enter politics. For all of this happening not only in the wilderness of the soul, but in the real world which accomplishes its seductions not by offering you good opportunists to be wicked but by offering opportunities to be good, to be active and effective , to be admired and central and apparently loved.” James Baldwin’s journey as a writer intensifies the credibility of the assertion he offers about the challenges that writers play against. Writers may modify their focus from writing after they feel that making a breakthrough in writing is demanding. Navigating the break point is what promotes or ruins a writer’s career and it all contingent on the defenses that such a writer takes up.
James Baldwin appeals to the ideology of Value Priorities when he objects Norman’s pronouncement to run for New York mayor. In his considerations about Norman’s decision, he thinks, “You’re one of the very few writers around who might really become a great writer, who might help to excavate the buried consciousness of this country, and you want to settle for being a lousy mayor of New York. It is not your job.” In this passage, James Baldwin proclaims his ideology about the paramount obligation of writers. Baldwin holds that Norman’s choice to vie for mayor would diminish his likelihood of being part of the course to infuse social order in America by way of writing. Even though the post of mayor is dominant, it cannot be as valuable as writing in making Americans conscious about the compound dynamics that stimulate their identities. For James Baldwin, vying for mayor is synonymous with darting away from the principal duty of a writer.
