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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Blues for Mister Charlie, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racism and Individuality
Masculinity
Christianity and Oppression
Sexuality and Love
Money and Opportunity
Summary
Analysis
A gunshot rings out. A white man, Lyle, drops the corpse of a young Black man, Richard, and expresses his wish—using a racial slur—that every Black person should die like Richard. Later, in a church—from which is visible a courthouse flying an American flag—a Black minister, Meridian, coaches Black students on not reacting when white hecklers call them slurs, call their sisters or mothers sex workers, or threaten to cut off their penises. One student spits on another, and Meridian has to break up a fight. Everyone is shaking.
When Lyle wishes that every Black person would die like Richard, it makes clear that Lyle did not shoot Richard from merely individual or interpersonal motives: Lyle murdered Richard in an anti-Black hate crime, and racist Lyle sees Richard as somehow representative of Blackness. Subsequently, when Black Christian minister Meridian is training racial justice protestors in a Christian church, it reminds readers of the centrality of Black Christian churches to organizing the African-American civil rights movement (1954–1968), an extended campaign against segregation and for equal rights in the U.S. The protestors anticipate that white hecklers will insult them in specifically sexual ways, emphasizing how anti-Black racism often involves negative sexual stereotypes about Black women and men.
Themes
Meridian’s mother, Mother Henry, enters. More Black students—including Juanita, Lorenzo, and Pete—enter carrying signs and looking like they’ve been attacked. Pete is crying. Lorenzo claims not to blame Pete—it makes him feel terrible too, standing there while white people attack—but eventually he yells at Pete to stop, “goddammit!” When Juanita points out that they’re in church, Lorenzo says he wishes they were in an “arsenal” and says he doesn’t understand Meridian: Meridian’s son Richard was murdered last week, and the “white man’s God” let it happen.
Though the protestors are organizing out of a church, Lorenzo expresses skepticism toward the Christian ideal of pacifism when he wishes the protestors were in an “arsenal,” i.e. a place for storing weaponry. By calling the Christian God the “white man’s God,” Lorenzo also reminds his listeners that many white enslavers forcibly converted the Black people they enslaved to Christianity, making Christianity by some viewpoints an oppressors’ religion.
Themes
When Lorenzo says he wishes he could drag God “through this town at the end of a rope,” Juanita tells him that would make him no better than white people. Lorenzo asks what better means: “Better at being a doormat, better at being a corpse?” He points out that, after many non-violent protests, several of their protesters have been seriously harmed and all they’ve gained is access to an obsolete library. Now white people are killing them, while they don’t have guns and the police won’t protect them.
To Lorenzo, guns represent the possibility of violent self-defense. Because he lives in a violent white-supremacist society that targets him for his Blackness, he feels that embracing Christian pacificism and the moral high ground will end with him as a “doormat” or a “corpse.” Juanita, by contrast, cares about maintaining the moral high ground over white oppressors: precisely because dragging someone “through this town at the end of a rope” sounds like something white lynchers would do, she wants no part of it.
Themes
Meridian asks whether the police arrested any protestors. Pete says the police are too busy trying to explain away Richard’s corpse. When Meridian declares his intention to bring the murderer to trial, Lorenzo points out that the murderer has killed a Black man before, and the police did nothing. When Meridian declares that Parnell will help, Pete says that Parnell won’t act against his “buddy.” Meridian insists that Parnell is the one white person who’s worked to ensure a trial. Lorenzo says he doesn’t trust Parnell: white people only act morally when they want Black people to—and Lorenzo feels that he, Lorenzo, has the right to act as immorally as anyone. Meridian retorts that he doesn’t have the right—because he “know[s] better.”
Meridian and Lorenzo’s disagreement over Parnell poses an important thematic question: are white people like Parnell capable of breaking with their white-supremacist social indoctrination and acting according to their individual consciences? Then, Meridian and Lorenzo’s disagreement about whether Lorenzo “know[s] better” than to act as badly as white people do poses another thematic question: do Black people have an obligation to be more moral than their white oppressors, and, if so, why? Meridian thinks that Black people do not have the right to behave as badly as white people simply because they do “know better”—though he doesn’t make clear whether he thinks that is due to the teachings of Black Christian churches or simply due to a clearer-eyed view of the horrors of white supremacy.
Themes
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Parnell enters and announces that a warrant has been issued for Lyle’s arrest. When Juanita says that no one in town will talk to Parnell anymore, he says he hopes those assembled will. Then he says he wants to go warn Lyle—who is his friend. When Juanita thanks Parnell, he asks her not to—he only did as he felt compelled. He leaves. Meridian wonders whether Lyle will be convicted. Juanita says that they haven’t yet arrested Lyle, who is “no worse than the others.”
This short scene suggests that Parnell is trying to act against white supremacy according to his individual conscience—yet he still openly admits that he is friends with Lyle, the white man who murdered Richard. This admission foreshadows that Parnell may have to choose between following his conscience and maintaining his friendship with Lyle. Meanwhile, when Juanita says that Lyle is “no worse than” the other white people in town, it suggests that Lyle’s violent white supremacy is mainstream in the town, not an aberration.
Themes
On the white side of town, Lyle is bouncing his infant son. His wife Jo enters and complains about how Lyle has been staying out until the early morning. Lyle claims he’s planning to expand the store. When Jo points out that the store is scraping by, Lyle predicts—using a racial slur—that their Black customers will come back soon. Jo asks where Lyle will get money to expand the store, Lyle suggests he’ll get a loan from Parnell. Jo says that Parnell called earlier, saying he’d looked for Lyle at the store, but Lyle wasn’t there. Lyle claims he went for a walk.
Lyle’s regular use of racial slurs underscores his casual racism and white-supremacist commitments. Yet his conversation with Jo makes clear he is economically reliant on Black customers and that he lacks money to expand his store by himself. His words hint that he resents relying on Black customers, suggesting that his economic anxiety and his racism feed off one another.
Themes
Jo says Parnell mentioned he would come by with bad news and predicts that Lyle will be arrested: he was the last person to see “that crazy boy” Richard and that now everyone is thinking about “that other time.” Lyle insists the other time was self-defense. When Jo wonders what happened to the wife of the man Lyle killed, Lyle suggests he’d wouldn’t know—but then he says she had relatives in Detroit. When Jo says that the wife was pretty, Lyle (using a racial slur) says she looked like a child, too young for her husband. Jo says that all the “talk” about the incident frightens her. When Lyle asks whether she believes it, she claims she doesn’t and mentions that the coming Monday is their one-year wedding anniversary.
Jo’s casual reference to Richard, an adult, as a “crazy boy” underscores her racism. Her and Lyle’s discussion of “that other time”—by implication, the other time Lyle killed a Black man—both makes clear that Lyle has a violent history and that Jo and Lyle feel uneasy about the prior killing, though perhaps for different reasons. The revelation that Lyle’s first victim had a young, pretty wife hints that perhaps Lyle had a sexual motive for killing him—and hints in turn that Lyle has experienced interracial sexual attraction despite his virulent racism.
Themes
The Brittens’ bell rings. It’s Parnell. Lyle, calling Parnell “old rascal,” says he’s been too busy with Black people for his white friends and (using a racial slur) suggests he might have a Black “wench” for a girlfriend. Parnell apologizes to Jo for her husband. When Lyle asks Parnell what he’s been up to, Parnell claims he’s been defending Lyle to the Chief of Police—but that the police do intend to arrest Lyle, as Joel Davis (Papa D) has testified that Lyle was the last person to see Richard alive. Lyle suggests that all this is “foolishness,” but Parnell points out that if Richard had been white, Lyle would already be in jail.
Lyle insinuates that Parnell only advocates for the Black townsfolk because he has a Black girlfriend. This association suggests that white supremacists tend to link advocacy for racial justice with the possibility of interracial sex, on which white supremacists like Lyle seem anxiously fixated. Parnell’s claim that he defended Lyle to the police—when his earlier conversation with Meridian and the others suggests that he actually pushed the police to arrest Lyle—shows his troubling desire to preserve his friendship with Lyle despite Lyle’s violent hate crime. When Parnell points out that Lyle would already be in jail if Richard were white, meanwhile, it makes clear that racism will likely stymie justice in Richard’s murder case.
Themes
Lyle and Parnell (using racial slurs) discuss whether Richard counted as a “northern” Black person and whether the North “ruined” him. Lyle thinks yes; he also speculates that Richard was a drug addict and that another Black man probably killed him. When Parnell says that he doesn’t think a “colored boy” who comes home to the South from the North deserves to die, Lyle says that he has nothing “against colored folks”—but he doesn’t believe in racial mixing, which he says (using racial slurs again) will end with a large Black man coming on to Jo.
Even though Parnell seems to be trying to help Meridian get justice for Richard’s murder, he still casually uses racial slurs and calls adult Richard a “boy” in conversation with Lyle, showing how ingrained anti-Black racism and white supremacy were among white people in the 1960s U.S. When he and Lyle debate whether the North “ruined” Richard, it suggests that white-supremacist Lyle believes that Black people in the South “know their place” in a way that Northern Black people don’t—another example of Lyle’s virulent racist views. Finally, Lyle bizarrely insists that racial justice will lead to Black men hitting on his wife, showing how sexual anxieties and the employment of anti-Black sexual stereotypes feed into white supremacy.
Themes
Parnell asks whether, if Lyle’s son wanted to marry a Chinese girl, Lyle would shoot his son or the girl to stop it. When Lyle asks whether Parnell is turning on him, Parnell says he’s “just trying to make you think.” Lyle points out that Parnell never married a Chinese girl or anyone. When he asks whether Parnell will marry his current girlfriend, Parnell says no—anyway, she could do better than him. After Parnell leaves, Lyle announces that he’ll never be convicted.
When Parnell “tr[ies] to make [Lyle] think” about how Lyle would react if his son wanted an interracial marriage, it shows that Parnell understands it’s racist anxieties about interracial sex that drive some of Lyle’s white-supremacist attitudes. However, Parnell may underestimate the depths of Lyle’s racism, as Parnell still seems to believe he can change Lyle’s mind through dialogue.
Themes
On the Black side of town, in church, Meridian, Mother Henry, and the Black students reminisce about Richard’s favorite songs. In a brief flashback, Richard sings in his childhood room. When Mother Henry brings him food, Richard calls himself a “busted musician” and asks aloud what he’s doing back in the South. When Richard asks whether Mother Henry has ever been north, she tells him that Meridian told her about it after his visits. Richard says Meridian never really knew New York—that Richard knew more. Mother Henry says all children think they know more than their parents. When Richard asks whether she thought that, she says she thought she could find out more because she was born after slavery.
In the prior conversation between Lyle and Parnell, a Black person going North represented a fundamental change in their racial attitudes—a casting-off of Southern white supremacy. Thus, when Richard claims that he really knew New York City in a way that Meridian never did, he may be implying that he has more enlightened pro-Black and anti-racist views than his Southern father. Mother Henry’s claim that all children think they know more than their parents, meanwhile, suggests that newer generations always believe they are more enlightened than previous ones—which may or may not actually be true.
Themes
Richard asks Mother Henry what she found out. She says she learned to care for her family and instill awe of God in her children. Richard says he’s an atheist. Mother Henry retorts that that’s not his decision—his living body believes in God even if he doesn’t. Richard calls Mother Henry “smart.” Then he says that while he convinced Meridian that New York was a better place for a Black person, it really wasn’t.
Though in prior scenes Lorenzo has critiqued Christianity as a force of white oppression, this scene represents Mother Henry’s Christianity as fierce and dignified—Richard, despite his professed atheism, calls her faith “smart.” Thus, the play demonstrates sympathy with Black Christians even if not with Christianity per se. Meanwhile, Richard’s claim that New York wasn’t actually any better for Black people than the South indicates that anti-Black racism is not a strictly regional, Southern problem but a ubiquitous national problem in the U.S.
Themes
Mother Henry asks why Richard didn’t come home. He says he wanted Meridian to be proud of him—because he wasn’t proud of his father, whom he wishes had used a gun to kill every person in the “white man’s hotel” where his mother died. When Mother Henry insists that his mother fell, Richard insists that the white men at the hotel sexually harassed her—and one of them pushed her. Mother Henry says he can’t blame white people for every bad thing—“hatred” is “poison.” Yet Richard insists that hatred is going to cure him.
The conversation between Richard and Mother Henry implies that Richard’s mother worked at a white hotel, where she fell—or was pushed—to her death. Richard’s belief that white sexual harassers murdered his mother suggests another dimension to white supremacists’ anxieties about interracial sex. It portrays the idea that racist white men are afraid of competing with Black men sexually but feel entitled to sexual access to Black women, reacting with violence when Black women refuse them. Mother Henry’s claim that “hatred” is “poison” is an implicitly Christian viewpoint (Christianity encourages its adherents to love even their enemies), a viewpoint that the atheist Richard rejects.
Themes
Richard takes out a gun and tells Mother Henry that he’ll “take one of the bastards with me” if he needs to. Mother Henry begs him to give her the gun. He refuses and insists that she not tell Meridian. After a moment, she exits. Later, Juanita walks in looking for Meridian and Mother Henry and encounters Richard. At first they don’t recognize each other; then they hug with exclamations. Pete walks in, and Juanita introduces him as a college student. They invite Richard to come with them for a drink.
Richard’s claim that he’ll “take one of the bastards with me” if necessary suggests that he is talking about defending himself against a possible fatal attack, not about instigating violence himself. In the U.S., people supposedly have the right to defend themselves with guns in this way—yet Mother Henry’s horror indicates that she believes that because Richard is Black, white people would kill him if they knew he was asserting his right to self-defense. Thus, Richard’s gun seems to symbolize how, in a white-supremacist society, Black people are denied the right to self-defense.
Themes
Richard, Juanita, and Pete go to Papa D’s Juke Joint. Juanita reintroduces Richard to Papa D, who asks how long Richard has been gone. Richard says eight years. Afterwards, when Richard, Juanita, and Pete sit down together, Richard asks whether Papa D is a “Tom.” Pete says yes: Papa D still trades with Lyle, who treats Black people badly and whom the students have been boycotting. Juanita explains that Lyle killed a Black man named Old Bill, and the rumor was it was because Lyle was “carrying on with” Old Bill’s young wife, and Old Bill tried to stop it.
When Richard asks whether Papa D is a “Tom,” he is alluding to white author Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). Though the novel is strongly anti-slavery, its condescending representations of Black people, in particular the titular character Uncle Tom, gave birth to “Uncle Tom” as a slang term for a Black man who is deferential toward white people or betrays other Black people to white people. When Juanita explains that Lyle may have been having an affair with Old Bill’s wife, meanwhile, it further illuminates the nature of Lyle’s white supremacy and anxieties about interracial sex: Lyle feels sexually entitled to Black women but tremendously anxious about sexual competition with Black men. This explains his irrational fear of Black men flirting with his wife—and his murder of his lover’s husband.
Themes
Richard expresses disgust that white men can assault and kill Black women, while any Black man who touches a white woman will be castrated. Then he starts showing Pete photographs of white girls he’s dated in New York, bragging about how desperate they are. He claims that every one of them will marry a “faggoty white boy” but they want him for good sex, while he freeloads off them. When Juanita mentions that this sounds “sad,” Richard says he wants them to be sad—but then he admits that he just “screwed up.” When Papa D walks by, Richard tries to show him the photos—but Papa D says he thought Richard was smarter than that and leaves. When Richard criticizes Papa D’s fear, Pete and Juanita suggest that Richard is courting a lynching.
As the writer of Blues for Mister Charlie, James Baldwin, was himself a gay man, readers should not interpret the play as endorsing Richard’s homophobic descriptions of his white girlfriends’ future husbands. Implicitly, Richard feels emasculated by a white-supremacist society in which he cannot protect Black women victimized by white men. As Richard has not yet figured out how to move past his extreme grief and powerlessness constructively, he tries to emasculate white men in turn by having sex with white women, claiming to be better at sex than white men, and calling white men homophobic slurs. Juanita’s flat description of Richard’s behavior as “sad” hints that the play wants readers or viewers to view Richard’s behavior as unproductive and perhaps self-destructive. Meanwhile, the fear that Papa D, Pete, and Juanita express about the photos hints that even having photos of white women could make Richard a target for white-supremacist anxieties about interracial sex.
Themes
Pete excuses himself for a moment. When Richard asks Juanita to dance, she declines and asks whether he was “sick.” Richard asks why Juanita wants to know, and she says because she was his girlfriend once. When Richard asks whether she’s going to marry Pete, she says she’s not planning to marry soon—and she wants to leave the South. She used to think she’d go to law school in the North and come back, but now she isn’t sure: she hates fearing death all the time. Then, when she insists on knowing whether he was sick, Richard admits that he was a drug addict. Five years ago, he was lonely, working really hard at his music, and disenchanted with his white girlfriends whom he didn’t even like. Drugs made him feel better—until he got really addicted and ended up in jail.
When Richard describes himself as extremely lonely in New York despite having had a string of white girlfriends, it may imply that his girlfriends saw him as a trophy rather than as an individual, while he saw them as an opportunity to get back at sexually anxious white men rather than as people he actually wanted to spend time with.
Themes
Juanita says she’d like to see him get better and suggests going everywhere with him—because they’re both lonely. Then Lyle walks in. Juanita points him out to Richard, who wonders what would happen if he, Richard, walked into a “white place” so casually. Juanita warns him not to find out, and they go dance. Lyle comments wistfully to Papa D that he could never “dance like that”—and bumps into Juanita on his way out. When he says, “Pardon me,” Richard retorts, “Consider yourself pardoned.” Lyle asks whether Richard is new to town and leaves. Afterward, Pete asks whether Richard has a death wish. Richard dismisses him and continues dancing with Juanita.
When Richard wonders aloud what would happen if he wandered into a “white place” the way Lyle just wandered into a Black-owned establishment, it suggests that Richard is noticing and resenting a racial power imbalance: Lyle doesn’t have to worry about violence in Black spaces the way Richard would have to worry about violence in white spaces. Lyle’s comment that he could never “dance like that”—i.e. dance like Richard and Juanita—hints that he is jealous of Richard and Juanita’s grace and perhaps what he perceives to be their physical or sexual freedom. Implicitly due to his jealousy, he bumps Juanita, just to insert himself into her and Richard’s dance and make their happy experience about him. When Richard speaks to Lyle sarcastically and Lyle asks whether Richard is new in town, Lyle is implying that Richard doesn’t know how things work in town—that Lyle can get away with doing whatever he wants to Black people.
Themes
Back in the main timeline of the play, in the church, Pete asks Juanita why she’s been avoiding him. He says that she started withdrawing as soon as Richard arrived, but even now that Richard’s dead, she won’t turn to him. Juanita tries to explain that Richard’s need for her and his command of her attention rocked her self-understanding, and now she feels too adrift to promise fidelity to Pete. Pete insists that he’ll give her his fidelity and attention regardless. He says there’s love in her, but she won’t be able to “give it to the world” until someone helps her. Juanita agrees, saying “the world is a loveless place.”
Though sexuality and in particular white-supremacist anxiety about Black sexuality are everywhere in the play, romantic love seems much rarer, perhaps because romantic love requires people to pay attention to one another as individuals—an individual attention that racist thinking renders more difficult. Juanita’s claim that “the world is a loveless place” thus indirectly comments on the way that racism tends to infect and ruin many interpersonal relationships throughout the play.
Themes
Car headlights pass through the church windows, and everyone goes silent. The office telephone rings. Mother Henry answers; afterward, she tells the others that a man named Freddy Roberts just discovered two white men under his porch trying to blow up his house—he went for his rifle, but the men got away. He was calling the church to warn them in case white men came around there. Lorenzo laments that they have no guns like Freddy Roberts—and suggests that white men wouldn’t feel so confident about invading Black neighborhoods if a few of them got shot. Everyone discusses how to warn people, and Lorenzo sarcastically comments that anybody without a gun or a dog can use their Bible for protection.
Freddy Roberts’s story is an example of a Black person successfully using a gun in self-defense, strengthening the association between Black gun ownership and legitimate self-defense in the play. In this context, Lorenzo’s sarcastic comment about people using a Bible for protection if they don’t have a gun is best understood as a criticism of Christian pacifism. Lorenzo believes that Black people would be better off shooting white people who threaten them than protesting nonviolently as Christian teaching would have them do.
Themes
In a flashback, Richard returns home from Papa D’s juke joint and runs into Meridian. They chat, and Richard mentions that if he’d stayed in the South, he might have married Juanita by now. When Meridian points out that he could still marry Juanita, Richard asks whether Meridian ever considered remarrying—Juanita, for instance. Meridian, after dodging the question a moment, admits that he has considered marrying Juanita but has never mentioned it to her. Then Richard demands to know why Meridian never told him that Richard’s mother was murdered. Meridian says that he didn’t want Richard’s life “poisoned” by “useless and terrible suspicions.”
After Meridian admits an attraction to Juanita that he never mentioned to her, Richard makes what seems like an abrupt change of subject: he asks about his mother’s murder. Yet perhaps Richard isn’t changing the subject: perhaps the reader is meant to understand that Meridian never acted on his attraction to Juanita because he was so traumatized by “terrible suspicions” about his wife’s death—namely, that she was murdered by a white man or white men with whom she refused to have sex. If so, Meridian’s ongoing trauma and inability to enter into another romantic relationship would show how violent racism can “poison[]” not only interracial relationships, but also relationships between Black people.
Themes
When Richard insists that Meridian let Richard go North because he was afraid Richard was ashamed of him, Meridian says that he thought he had a duty to his dead wife to stay and try to change and help the town he loved. Richard says that Meridian has been all “public,” no “private.” Meridian admits it and asks forgiveness. Richard claims “there’s nothing to forgive”; then he takes out his gun, says it upset Mother Henry, and asks Meridian to hold it for him—until Richard asks for it. Meridian agrees and takes the gun. Richard asks whether Meridian thinks Richard and Juanita getting together is a good idea. Meridian says it is. They say goodnight.
The claim that Meridian has been all “public” and no “private” suggests that, in becoming the leader of civil rights activism in his town, Meridian has had to shelve all his personal concerns for the greater good—another way that white racism attacks Black individuality. When Richard gives Meridian his gun, he is symbolically cooperating with Meridian’s desire for Christian nonviolence. However, he’s also asserting that he still has a right to ask for the gun later, and to defend himself with violence if necessary.
Themes
Back in the play’s main timeline, the students say goodbye to Meridian and Mother Henry and leave the church. Parnell enters. When Parnell says he heard things had taken a turn for the worse, Meridian says they’ll get worse still—and wonders aloud whether it was a mistake to counsel the Black townspeople against having guns. Parnell argues that if the Black townspeople had guns, they’re the ones who’d be killed. Meridian points out that they get killed anyway—and expresses doubt about Parnell’s claim.
There is no indication that Richard had his gun on him when Lyle murdered him. When Meridian wonders whether he made a mistake in counseling nonviolence to the Black townspeople, he may be wondering more specifically whether he accidentally contributed to his son’s death. Parnell’s argument that Black people would be killed for having guns and Meridian’s retort that Black people are killed anyway, meanwhile, suggests a catch-22 for Black people in a violent white-supremacist society: Black people will be killed if they attempt to assert their right to self-defense—but they’ll also be killed if they don’t defend themselves.
Themes
When Parnell asks what will happen if Meridian breaks down, Meridian says maybe the Black townspeople would find someone competent to lead them. Parnell asks whether he means “someone with a gun.” Meridian says that before they were converted to Christianity, Black people weren’t raised to “turn the other cheek”—and maybe things were better then. He wonders aloud whether he turned to the Christian God to give him dignity because men wouldn’t allow him to have any, and then he points out that his Christianity didn’t save his wife or his son Richard.
In Matthew 5:39, Jesus encourages people to “turn the other cheek” if slapped rather than hitting back—a teaching that emphasizes forgiveness and nonviolence. In the aftermath of Richard’s murder, Meridian vocally doubts whether these Christian teachings of nonviolence are good for Black people under constant assault from a violent white-supremacist society. In this context, when Parnell asks whether Meridian wants “someone with a gun” to lead the Black townspeople, “someone with a gun” symbolizes someone who would preach not Christian pacifism but violent self-defense.
Themes
When Parnell reminds Meridian how he used to say that his race was “the human race,” Meridian repeats the phrase in astonishment. Parnell says he’s never heard this “rage” or “hatred” in Meridian’s voice before, but Meridian says Parnell has heard it—in Black religious music he claims to appreciate—but hasn’t realized what it was. When Parnell says that maybe he has realized it—maybe his life is hard too—Meridian says that when Parnell was talking to the police about Richard’s case, he saw Richard as a “problem,” not a human being. Parnell claims he took that tone to “accomplish what we wanted”: he can get things for Meridian precisely because he’s white.
When Parnell reminds Meridian that he used to say his race was “the human race,” Parnell is alluding indirectly to the Christian teaching that all human beings are figuratively siblings because all are children of God—and, as such, all human beings belong to the same family or “race.” Meridian repeats this phrase in astonishment because—even if it is morally true that all human beings are in some sense “family”—Meridian’s life is shaped by white racism that denies the equality of white and Black people. When Meridian furthermore claims that Black religious music contains “rage” and “hatred,” he suggests that Black Americans sublimate the pain of racism into religious expression. Finally, Meridian indicates that Parnell, despite being a nominal ally, sees Richard as a “problem”—a racist viewpoint even if Parnell is trying to solve the “problem” in the name of racial justice. Parnell, for his part, argues that he was just using his white privilege to accomplish Meridian’s goals.
Themes
Parnell asks for “mercy.” When Meridian points out that white people never show mercy to Black people, Parnell begs Meridian to remember their friendship and see that Parnell “didn’t do it.” Then he begs Meridian to understand that it’s hard to divest oneself of privilege when privilege is a visceral part of one’s identity. Meridian asks what hope there is if “Mister Charlie can’t change.” When Parnell asks who Mister Charlie is, Meridian explains it’s Parnell—it’s “all white men.” When Parnell says that Meridian sounds like Richard, expressing Black people’s smothered hate for white people, Meridian says that he just wanted his son to have a life—but Lyle killed him.
Mercy and forgiveness are highly valued in the Christian tradition. When Meridian has difficulty showing “mercy” to white people, it indicates how white racism negatively impacts even Black religious practice, making it harder for Meridian to live out Christian ideals. When Meridian calls Parnell and all white men “Mister Charlie”—an old-fashioned slang-term for bossy, racist white men—it hints that white racism flattens white as well as Black individuality, making white people behave in predictably destructive patterns.
Themes
When Parnell claims that they don’t know Lyle killed Richard, Meridian points out that there’s no other suspect, Lyle killed Old Bill, and Lyle hates Black people. Parnell denies that Lyle hates Black people—he’s just “poor” and “victimized,” as victimized by his class as Black people are by their race. Meridian tells Parnell to “spare him the historical view” and insists Lyle killed Richard. In turn, Parnell insists that to uphold justice, they have to consider Lyle innocent until proven guilty. When Parnell asks whether Meridian wants vengeance, Meridian says no: he wants Lyle and all the white people in town to see the evil they commit and permit—and to “turn from evil and do good.”
Parnell’s claim that poor white Lyle is just as “victimized” for his class as Black people are for their race is clearly false: white Lyle has literally gotten away with murdering Old Bill, a Black man, something that would never have happened if their races were reversed. Yet Parnell’s invocation of class prejudice does suggest that Lyle’s racism may be related to his poverty and class insecurity. Meanwhile, Meridian’s claim that he wants white people to “turn from evil and do good”—an approximate quotation of Psalm 34:14—indicates that what Meridian wants is for nominally Christian white people to actually follow the teachings of Christianity.
Themes
Parnell asks Meridian to consider whether Lyle didn’t do it and claims that Lyle “suffers.” When Meridian asks how, Parnell says Lyle suffers from ignorance and a lack of self-knowledge or self-control—but he isn’t an evil person. Meridian demands that Parnell go ask his friend Lyle whether Lyle killed Richard. Parnell demurs, saying he can’t “betray” Lyle. Meridian says that Parnell can betray Meridian, though—that Parnell is “just another white man.” Parnell says he’s just not sure he can do it for Meridian, and Meridian retorts that Parnell should do it for himself. Parnell leaves, and Meridian cries out, “would God I had died for thee—my son, my son!”
Parnell’s claim that Lyle “suffers” is an interesting one—it may imply that, in the view of the play, racism is self-destructive as well as destructive toward others because it involves a lack of self-knowledge: Lyle falsely assumes his worth derives from his whiteness and so never develops any self-worth. Parnell’s claim that Lyle isn’t evil and his refusal to “betray” Lyle, however, suggest that Parnell may also lack self-knowledge or self-control: he doesn’t realize or can’t manage how his long-term friendship with Lyle implicates him in anti-Black violence. Finally, Meridian’s grief-stricken cry “would to God I had died for thee—my son, my son!” is an approximate quotation of the Biblical King David mourning his son Absalom (2 Samuel 18:33), another indication that despite Meridian’s ambivalent feelings toward his Christianity, his religion also deeply structures his emotions.
Themes
