Harboring Hatred and Fearing Forgiveness: The Female Saints in James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain

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2013
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Haverford College. Department of Religion
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Since the film adaptation of Go Tell It on the Mountain was released in 1985, scholars have given little attention to its validity as a source of analysis alongside the vast discourse on Baldwin's novel. Considering that Trudier Harris's book, Black Women in the Fiction of James Baldwin, was also published in 1985, there exists great possibility for comparative analysis of many constellations of the black female experience depicted on screen. This project selects the female saints, Elizabeth and Florence, as characters for investigation in both the novel and film given their placement orbiting John's religious conversion. They are examined separate from the black women also featured, as those women simply remain prayerful congregants in the Temple of the Fire Baptized or pass away. In both mediums, the individual and collective histories of the female saints lack reason for being enamored with and enraptured by men aside from the fleeting solace they offer in God's absence. Wrought with suffering brought on by their determination to remain hateful, resentful, and unforgiving, the female saints live in perpetual suffering. For the sake of centralizing John's religious conversion on screen, the complexity and perpetuity of their suffering remained simplistic, a betrayal to Baldwin's poetic prose. Moreover, Baldwin's belief for God to be "a means of liberation and not a means to control others" is untrue for the female saints. The liberation he conceives of comes only if one is willing to unbind their bitterness and unhinge their hatred. Instead of reaching deliverance, transcending their suffering, the female saints drown in the pain of their past.
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