Language, Narrative, and Truth Theme Analysis

As a writer, Baldwin is preoccupied with the power of language and stories. He is particularly interested in the way in which language can be used to convey the truth lying beneath superficial and misleading ideas about the world. He argues that “Every legend… contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.” With this statement, Baldwin proposes that existing narratives can contain kernels of truth, but that it is only by understanding the power and importance of language that this truth can be drawn out.

One of the most important recurring ideas in the book is the notion that black Americans have been restricted from telling their own stories, and that it is vitally necessary that these stories be told and heard. “It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story. It is a story which otherwise has yet to be told and which no American is prepared to hear.” In this argument, Baldwin isolates two separate problems surrounding black peoples’ ability to control their own narratives. On one hand, there have been few opportunities for black people to tell their own stories; on the other, there is a resistance among white people to believe these stories and take them seriously. Throughout American history, the power of narration has been almost exclusively in the hands of white people. (This can be traced all the way back to the banning of African languages under slavery and the denigration of African-American English dialects, which Baldwin explores in his essay on Carmen Jones.) Baldwin proposes a sense of dual responsibility when it comes to the future of narrative control: black people must tell their stories truthfully, and white people must be prepared to listen.

At the same time, Baldwin does not suggest that conveying the truth through language and storytelling is a simple matter. One of the most important and distinctive attributes of Baldwin’s writing is his emphasis on complexity and ambiguity. He argues: “It is part of the business of the writer––as I see it––to examine attitudes, to go beneath the surface, to tap the source.” For Baldwin, this does not just mean exposing blatant untruths. It also means pushing through every oversimplified, misleading, or clichéd ideas in order to uncover the complex and difficult reality lying beneath.

One of the ways that Baldwin explores the difficulty and complexity of communication is through his account of his time in France. When he gets arrested, Baldwin misunderstands what the French authorities say to him—not because he doesn’t comprehend the literal meaning of the words, but because, as a non-native speaker, he doesn’t have access to the full nuance and complexity of the way French is used. Similarly, when he is in the village in Switzerland, the children shout “Neger!” at him as he walks passed. Although the sound of this word is deeply painful, Baldwin also reminds himself that it has a different meaning in a Swiss village than it would have in America. He argues that by shouting “Neger,” the Swiss children are really identifying him as a stranger. In America, when white children shout “Nigger,” it does not mean “stranger” but is rather an explicit racial insult intended to reinforce the lower status of black people within white supremacy. The fact that the meaning of language changes in different cultural contexts confirms the importance of historical specificity, and the idea that people’s “inheritance”—whether linguistic, cultural, or historical—is vital to understanding who they are.

Baldwin also examines silence as an oppositional force to the power of language and narrative. He claims that “as is the inevitable result of things unsaid, we find ourselves until today oppressed with a dangerous and reverberating silence; and the story is told, compulsively, in symbols and signs, in hieroglyphics.” Baldwin’s advocacy for breaking through this silence through language and storytelling, then, is an attempt at liberation and accessing truth. However, he also considers that there can be powerful forms of silence that stand in opposition to false and incomplete narratives: “Society is held together by our need; we bind it together with legend, myth, coercion, fearing that without it we will be hurled into that void, within which, like the earth before the Word was spoken, the foundations of society are hidden.” Here Baldwin suggests that it might even be necessary to confront the “void” of a language-less, story-less silence in order to access the truth. At the very least, it is vital that people do not cling to false narratives in order to insulate themselves against this silence. Through constructing his own narrative, which honors the power of language and complexity of truth, Baldwin does his own part to rectify the problem of false stories.