Joe Turner’s Come and Gone Themes

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is a play characterized by transience. Because they’re temporary boarders without permanent homes of their own, all the people living in Seth’s boardinghouse embody the human desire to wander and search. New faces arrive without warning, while prominent characters like Jeremy set off to find a new life before the play has even ended. That this sense of rootlessness runs throughout the play aligns with the historical and cultural…

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone takes place in 1911, 48 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, which legally liberated all slaves in the Union. Even though the play’s characters exist in a post-slavery America—and have for nearly 50 years—their lives are still influenced by the nation’s racist past and present. In particular, Herald Loomis and Jeremy’s everyday lives are directly impacted by the prejudiced and inhumane precedent set by slavery. By showcasing the tangible ways…

Spirituality is framed in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone as something people turn to in order to find meaning in their lives. There are, of course, many different kinds of spirituality—a fact Wilson takes into account by portraying characters with wide-ranging belief systems. Bynum, for example, invests himself in old forms of African healing and mystical practices. Loomis’s wife Martha, on the other hand, devotes herself to Christianity, believing that faith in…