On Cultural Trauma Of African Americans In Go Tell It On The Mountain

Go Tell It on the Mountain is known as one of the most successful novels of JamesBaldwin. The novel depicts the history of John’s family from the Civil War to the1930s. It isnot only the representation of the trauma in black family, but also an epitome of the history ofAfrican Americans. The trauma remains an incurable trauma in African Americans and theirdescendents, even though slavery has been abolished for many years after the Civil War.In the light of Ron Eyerman, he defines cultural trauma as the dramatic loss of identityand meaning, a tear in the social fabric, which puts a group of people together, achievingsome degree of cohesion. This thesis aims to apply the theory of cultural trauma to analyzethe influence of cultural trauma on the representatives of the three generations of AfricanAmericans, including Rachel, Elizabeth and John. It demonstrates that cultural trauma inAfrican Americans possesses the characteristic of era as well as the common feature ofculture, and supplies the reference to comprehend the history of African Americans.This thesis discusses the three aspects of cultural trauma in African Americans, whichare embodied respectively in Rachel’s broken family relationship, Elizabeth’s destroyedlongings and John’s marginalized identity. The first chapter analyzes Rachel, as arepresentative of the first generation of African American in the novel, who suffers brokenfamily relationship under slavery. By articulating the three aspects of Rachel’s broken family,that is, her physical separation from her son, her emotional alienation from her husband andthe psychological estrangement from her daughter, this thesis illustrates that slaveryarticulates the source of African Americans’ trauma in the novel and destructs their familystructure, which makes them come out of their original family relative system and traumatizetremendously by bereaving their family members. It is worthy of noticing that the culturaltrauma under slavery is just an origin, a process in need of continuous change anddevelopment. The second chapter discusses the destroyed longings of Elizabeth who is arepresentative of the second generation of African American in the novel. Elizabeth, as ablack woman during Great Migration, encounters triple oppressions of economy, race andgender. It shows that racial discrimination, as a variant of slavery, ruins Elizabeth’s dream ofreestablishing a sweet family in New York. However, compared with the one in the south that Elizabeth escapes from, in the north, cultural trauma is transferred and deteriorated instead ofbeing healed in New York. The third chapter mainly analyzes John, as a representative of thethird generation of African American in the novel, confronts his marginalized identity.Through the analysis of John’s triple identities of a bastard, a black and a spokesman inHarlem community, it illuminates that John is incapable of obtaining family belongingness,and in addition, integrating into the white society. Furthermore, John, as a narrator of thetrauma, walks through the cultural trauma successfully by reviewing slave history andconfronting the racial discrimination straightly.By exploring the cultural trauma of the representatives of the three generations ofAfrican Americans in this novel, this thesis holds that the aim of Baldwin’s writing is notslavery institution itself, but slavery as a source of cultural trauma that affects AfricanAmericans continuously. Baldwin tries to reinterpret the past and face the history in order toalleviate the cultural trauma of African Americans. It is helpful for African Americans toknow themselves better, and to strengthen racial consciousness. Whereupon, confronting thehistory of African American bravely becomes an available measure for African Americans toinitiate trauma narrative and get out of cultural trauma.