Introduction to the author of "American Literature·James Baldwin·Appealing to Heaven"|Summary of Contents|Appreciation of Works

Introduction to the Author James Baldwin is an African-American novelist, essayist, and dramatist. and social critic, born on August 2, 1924 in Harlem, a black community in New York, and died in France on December 1, 1987 due to stomach cancer. He was an illegitimate son, his maternal grandmother had been a slave in a southern plantation, and his stepfather was a poor priest who was not supported by the parish. He treated Baldwin very cruelly. Baldwin claimed that his childhood life was extremely poor, and his family of 11 lived in a small, shabby house. Living in a miserable apartment, he received little education and mainly relied on self-taught. During his childhood, he often held his younger brother or sister in one hand and read with a book in the other. As soon as he could read, he had already conceived a novel in his mind. When he was 12 years old, he published it in a church newspaper. He wrote a short story about the Spanish Revolution and has been practicing writing poetry and scripts ever since. But his stepfather opposed his creation and wanted him to become a priest. He began preaching in the church at the age of 14. Not only did he give up preaching three years later, he also became a non-believer in religion. He left home soon after leaving the church and struggled in what he called "the world of American business and industry," working as a waiter, footman, industrial worker, and washing dishes in restaurants. The racial discrimination in American society finally made him intolerable, forcing him to go to Paris, France in 1948, where he completed his best novel "Calling to Heaven" while working hard and starving until the bloody racial conflict broke out in the United States in 1957. He returned to China only after the "Little Rock Incident". When he was living in Europe, he published many articles on black issues in American newspapers and magazines. In particular, he criticized the tradition of writing protest novels by the famous black writer Richard Wright who had cultivated him, which made him famous in the American literary world. . In 1962, his novel "Another Country" became a bestseller, and he became the most noticed African American writer after Wright. Baldwin is a writer with many talents and has created works in many genres. He is best and most famous for his prose, and he can be regarded as one of the most outstanding essayists in the United States after World War II.

Summary of content The novel is about a black priest family living in Harlem, a black district in New York in the 1930s. The protagonist of the novel is John, a smart and studious black boy. The story revolves around him and his stepfather, mother, aunt and others. John's stepfather, Gabriel, was a church deacon and was once "tempted by the devil" when he was young. His mother was originally a slave on a plantation in the South and gave birth to many children. By the time she was 30, one of her husbands had died and she had lost her husband. Four children - one died of illness, two were sent to the slave market and auctioned off by their master, and the other was brought to a residence by someone to be raised. Later, the master assigned her a slave husband, and gave birth to a daughter, Florence, and a son, Gabriel. Shortly after Gabriel was born, his biological father fled north and his whereabouts are unknown. After the Civil War, their family gained freedom. Because his mother doted on him, Gabriel was very naughty when he was a child. He often played truant, fought, and provoked white people. When he grew up, he became the "devil incarnate", doing everything he could to eat, drink, and gamble. He did it more than once. Being thrown into jail. One day, after spending the night with a bad woman, Gabriel walked home early in the morning. He was inspired by the fresh air, the quiet scenery, and the big tree towering in front of him. He suddenly thought of the greatness of God and the insignificance of himself, and began to regret his past. No, determined to start a new life. After that, he became a devout believer, quickly won the respect of people around him, and became a preaching pastor. Based on the needs of religious work, he married Deborah, an ugly black girl who had been raped by whites many years ago and was despised by local blacks. However, there was no love between them, and Gabriel treated her very badly. Unfortunately, not long after their marriage, he had sex with another black girl, Esther, who worked with him. Esther soon became pregnant. Gabriel was afraid that he would lose face if his scandalous deeds were publicized, so he stole his wife Deborah's private money and sent Esther to her parents' home in Chicago to give birth to the child. As a result, Esther died in childbirth, and their illegitimate son Royal was raised by Esther's parents. He later died in a Chicago hotel with a knife stabbed in his throat. Because of his selfishness and cowardice, Gabriel never dared to admit that Royal was his child. A few years later, Deborah fell ill and died. Before she died, she told Gabriel that she had long known about his affair with Esther and that Royal was his illegitimate son. She only hated him for lying to her. She never revealed her true feelings to her, otherwise she would have been willing to take Royal into her home and raise him. After Deborah's death, Gabriel left the South and came to the black district of Harlem, New York, to find his sister Florence, who had been away for 20 years, and settled down there. Florence left the South when she was 26 years old. She had long been fed up with the racial discrimination in the South. One day, the white owner of the family where she worked as a maid came to tease her again and asked her to be his concubine. She finally made up her mind to say goodbye to her bedridden mother, and resolutely came to the north to make a living. She met Frank, a black worker in Harlem, New York. The two fell in love and got married, but Frank didn't make much money and the couple often had financial problems. There were disagreements, and after each quarrel he would go out and drink. One night after more than ten years of marriage, he returned home after two days and three nights. The two had a fierce quarrel in the small kitchen. Frank ran away from home in a rage and never returned home. Later, when the World War broke out, he was drafted into the army and died in France.

Florence loved her husband very much. After he left, she felt relieved at first and then regretted it. She had to work as a female worker to make a living and lived alone. Florence met a miserable woman named Elizabeth in New York. Her childhood was spent in a series of disasters. When her mother died when she was 8 years old, her mother's sister came to her home and believed that her father was of bad character and unworthy of raising an innocent little girl, so she was forced to separate from the father she loved. Later, she fell in love with Richard, a black clerk, and the two came to New York together. Because they had no money to get married, they had to live together. One night, Richard was suddenly arrested by the police, saying that he was suspected of robbery and murder. Later, although there was insufficient evidence, He was released, but was insulted and severely beaten by white policemen during his detention. After returning home, he hugged Elizabeth and cried for a while. At night, he cut the blood vessels on his wrists with a razor and committed suicide. Elizabeth made a fatal mistake. In order not to increase the mental burden on Richard, she did not tell him that she was pregnant, otherwise Richard might not have committed suicide. She loved Richard so much that she did not deny that as long as she had Richard, the joy of heaven would be zero to her. Nor did she deny that, if she had been forced to choose between Richard and God, she would have turned away from God—even in tears. Once Richard died, she despaired of life and lived only for Richard's posthumous son. After Gabriel came to Harlem, he met Elizabeth at the home of his sister Florence. He first persuaded her to repent and convert to God, and then proposed to her, promising that she would treat her illegitimate son John as his own in the future. Elizabeth finally married him for the sake of her son John, and had one son and two daughters with him. The whole book is written in flashback style. When the novel begins, John is 14 years old, and Roy, the eldest child born to Elizabeth and Gabriel, is also in his teens. The two brothers have an abnormal relationship with their father. Gabriel had promised to raise John as his own son when he proposed, and he did so, but he had no feelings for John and often beat John for trivial matters, which aroused John's resentment. John always thought that Gabriel was his biological father. On the one hand, he wanted to love him, but on the other hand, he couldn't help but hate him. He not only wants to pursue material enjoyment and the joy of worldly life, but also hopes that he will not become a sinner to God and that his soul can be saved after death. Roy was born with a stubborn temper. One time, he got into a fight with a white kid and was stabbed in the head, almost killing him. When Gabrielle quarreled with Elizabeth over him and beat her, Roy even scolded his father: "Stop it, you black bastard, or I'll kill you!" Although Gabrielle beat him up for it. , but deep down I love him very much and feel that his behavior is very similar to my own when I was a child. The book ends with John repenting in church, but on the way home, Florence exposes Gabriel’s hypocrisy, saying: “Of all the men I know, you are the one who wishes the Bible was full of lies— —Because once that trumpet is blown, you will have to answer for it forever."

Appreciation of Works Baldwin lost his father's love when he was young, and his stepfather did not understand him and treated him too harshly, which later caused him to suffer psychological consequences. His physical and emotional feelings - his love and hate, his fear and loneliness - were poured into the poems, plays and novels he wrote. This book is considered to be Baldwin's semi-autobiographical novel. Most of the content in the book is related to his personal experience during the years of preaching in the church, and the profound psychological descriptions of the various characters in the book are even more true to him. The expression of thoughts and feelings. Before he wrote the novel, Baldwin had already criticized Mrs. Stowe's novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and the masterpiece "Native Son" by Richard Wright, the most famous black writer at the time (and his mentor), in critical articles. It is said that Bigger, the protagonist of "Native Son", is actually the descendant and flesh and blood of Uncle Tom, but Bigger's character is just the opposite of Uncle Tom, and his heart is full of fear and hatred: fear drives him to commit murder, and hatred drives him to *** Woman . Baldwin emphasized that both Stowe and Wright wrote "protest novels," but that this kind of fiction was out of date. Bigger's tragedy is not that he is a black American or that he is hungry and cold, but that he "resisted to obtain his own humanity." But in Baldwin's view, "Our humanity is our load, our life; we don't need to fight for it. What we need to do is infinitely more difficult than fighting - and that is to accept it." He He also said, "If the novels I write have any 'meaning', then they only contain this meaning: We should treat all people as 'human beings'. Any label, slogan, political party, skin color or even religion, They are not as important as the individual as a human being, so in the final analysis, writing about individuals is the most important.” The most basic point of Baldwin’s creative thinking is similar to that of Ellison, the author of “The Invisible Man”, which is that black people are the first. People, so exploring and writing about 'people' issues is more important than writing about issues like society and racial discrimination.

Baldwin also believed that "the American literary tradition is the tradition of the great Henry James" and that as a new generation of progressive black writers, he was more interested in Freudian psychoanalytic theory and existential philosophy than in Marxist class struggle theory. Therefore, in Baldwin's novels, relationships between people and racial relationships are often revealed through sexual relationships. For example, although this book does not often contain obscene sexual descriptions like the author's later novels, there are three plots in the book. Three unhappy marriages, two love tragedies, three sexual assaults or sexual assaults. Another feature of this book is that the characters are all black, and the plot does not involve racial relations. Therefore, the advertisement on the inner cover of the original book states: "This book is the debut work of a black writer. Although the book writes about black people, it is not based on race. It can be said to be a milestone in the development of American literature. "This book and "The Invisible Man" published a year earlier can indeed be said to be a milestone in the development of African American literature. They have shifted the focus of reflection and description in literary works from society to individuals - personal love and hate, personal self-exploration, personal alienation, etc. Their main artistic feature is to use various modern techniques (including stream of consciousness, montage and other techniques) to delicately describe psychological activities. John, the protagonist of this book, only occupies one-third of the book, and the time is also extremely concentrated (two days and one night before and after John's 14th birthday). However, the author uses John's thoughts and psychological changes as the main line, and uses changing lenses and time. The jumping technique inserts the memories of John's father, mother, aunt, etc., so that the lives, thoughts and feelings of each character contrast with each other and form an organic connection. As a result, the whole book describes not only the ideological changes of a black teenager's conversion to religion, but also the changes in the thoughts of a black teenager who converted to religion. It is the black history of John's family from the Civil War to the 1930s; it reflects not only the life experiences of John's family, but also the common experiences of the majority of black Americans, including the author himself. This book is also unique in describing black family life from a religious perspective. Religion originally had special significance for African Americans. As early as the slave era, slave owners tried every means to induce black slaves to believe in religion, so that they could peacefully endure the miserable life in this world and only place their hope in heaven after death. Therefore, African American religion not only has its own characteristics, but is also more deceptive. It also interacts with black life and has intricate connections. Baldwin is a famous essayist, and his best writing is also prose. He believes that prose and novels The combination can better express the strong feelings of the black nation. This book vividly displays the characteristics of prose novels when vividly describing the rich feelings of black people. The last part of the novel describes John lying on the floor in front of the altar and repenting. Excellent prose, with strong and rich emotions, vivid images, and delicate and profound psychological descriptions. It has been praised by some critics.