Father Comes Home From the Wars

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 2015

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

The Confederate and Union Uniforms

When Hero is made to fight in the Confederate Army alongside the Colonel, he is given a Confederate uniform. After he encounters Smith in Part 2, he begins to wear a Union jacket under his Confederate jacket. These two uniforms symbolize the dual allegiance Hero is forced to have; this symbol thus influences the theme of The Struggle for Freedom in an Unjust System, as Hero is forced to make this impossible choice for his freedom.

In Part 1, Hero is conflicted by the Colonel’s request that he fight on the Confederate side, which Hero thinks is the “wrong side” of the Civil War (21). Old Man notes that the “choice” given to Hero by the Colonel is a “little crumb of choice” (19), by which he means that Hero really has no choice at all. This “crumb” of choice is paralleled to the Confederate uniform Hero is given, which is “not a whole uniform / More like a bunch of scraps” (23). Just like Hero doesn’t have a real choice to fight alongside the Colonel, he doesn’t have a real uniform. Yet, the scraps of the Confederate uniform nonetheless symbolize the “side” Hero fights on in the Civil War. He fights alongside the Colonel, following his orders on and off the battlefield, and he never runs away, though people like Homer and Smith encourage him to.

An enslaved person himself, Hero nonetheless acutely feels the horror and injustice of chattel enslavement. After he meets and frees the captured Union soldier Smith, the stage directions indicate that Hero “puts on his Union coat […] Then he replaces the grey army coat, pulling it over the blue one” (103). The exact meaning of these lines is purposefully ambiguous: Is Hero’s allegiance to the Union, or the Confederacy? He follows the Colonel and remains with the Confederate Army. Yet, when he returns in Part 3, he does so with a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation in his pocket and a new name, “Ulysses,” that he has chosen for himself after the Union general Ulysses S. Grant. Part 3 is aptly named “The Union of My Confederate Parts,” using the names of each army to further highlight the ambiguous meaning of Hero simultaneously wearing both uniforms.

The Colonel’s Feather

The feather in the Colonel’s cap is a repeating motif associated with the themes of Making New Choices Versus Repeating Old Stories and The Struggle for Freedom in an Unjust System.

The feather in the Colonel’s cap is an ironic allusion to an “old story” in the form of a song: the pre-Revolutionary War song “Yankee Doodle,” commonly thought to be penned by British doctor Richard Schuckburg to “mock” Americans “as rude, crude, and cowardly” (“Yankee Doodle: The Story Behind the Song.” The Kennedy Center). The verse that contains the line, “stuck a feather in his cap / and called it macaroni,” “did not appear until 1842” (“Yankee Doodle”), 20 years before the play begins. In the Civil War, a “Yankee” came to mean a northerner fighting for the Union: For instance, Smith self-identifies as a Yankee. The song mocks a “Yankee” who puts a feather in his cap and calls it “macaroni,” which was a slang term for “fashionable.” The song implies that the feather does not make the Yankee look fashionable, but silly or ridiculous. Likewise, the people the Colonel enslaves comment on the ridiculousness of the feather that the Colonel wears. Hero says he looks like he’s “decorating himself to join the traveling circus” because the feather is “twice the size” of his head (16). By sticking a feather in his cap, the Colonel is inadvertently repeating old stories as he becomes a mockery for his overlarge feather, just like Yankee Doodle. This parallelism is ironic because of the Colonel’s alignment with the Confederacy rather than the “Yankee” Union forces.

To have a feather in one’s cap is also an idiom that means that someone has an achievement of which they are rightfully proud. The Colonel treats Hero like a feather in his cap, as he manipulates Hero by promising him freedom. He orders Hero around, showing off his usefulness and obedience, telling Hero, “Take out my plume. Fix it on my hat” (81), before asking Smith to admire it. The Colonel is flaunting his apparent control over Hero like it is an achievement. He continues, “I mostly just carry it around in a box. Hero made the box” (81), further drawing parallels between the feather and his so-called control over Hero, as Hero tries to cooperate with the Colonel’s wishes to gain his freedom.

Modern Slang

The use of 20th and 21st century slang is a repeating motif in the play. Most of the slang is AAVE, or African American Vernacular English. AAVE has “historically been maligned as just a broken form of English” and this assumption has “stigmatized the speakers of Black English as linguistically backward, uneducated, or unintelligent” (Luu, Chi. “Black English Matters.” JSTOR Daily, 2020). This play combines this form of speaking with the lyrical writing of classical drama, subverting traditional expectations about what “lyrical” or “proper” dramatic writing can look like. For instance, when the Chorus of Runaways is trying to persuade Homer to leave with them, they have the following exchange:

THIRD. Remember who you are. Here’s your chance to be true.

FIRST. True dat.

SECOND. You’ll go tonight with us.

FIRST. Whatchu say, huh?

THIRD. Whatchu say? (113).

The phrase “true dat” and the repetitions of “whatchu say” are more akin to the language spoken by contemporary Black American communities than communities of enslaved people in the Civil War era. In addition to using this type of dialogue to subvert typical expectations of dramatic language, Parks’s repeated use of modern slang emphasizes how the events of the past have repercussions on 21st century Black communities. For instance, the Second Runaway reflects on what post-Civil War freedom will be like, asking, “Will all in Freedomville welcome me with open arms?” (151). Though the characters in the play look forward to running toward freedom, audiences are aware that in reality, there would not be inroads toward equality for Black Americans for the next 100 years or more. The play’s audience will also know that even in the 21st century, systemic racism will continue to animate the structure of the United States. The Chorus of Runaway’s allusions to the future and use of modern slang emphasize this inequality across time.

Parks also uses modern slang to enact her signature “rep and rev” technique, which she describes as a “concept integral to the Jazz aesthetic in which the composer or performer will write or play a musical phrase once and again and again; etc.—with each revisit the phrase is slightly revised;” she considers this “an integral part of the African and African-American literary and oral traditions” (Steinbeck, Taylor. “Getting to the Deep Stuff: The Music of Father Comes Home.” American Conservatory Theatre, 2018). One use of this technique is a phrase repeated by both Homer and the Chorus of Runaways as they anticipate the fall of night: “Not dark enough / Not dark enough yet / Not dark enough yet to jet” (136). Parks “revs” up to her final repetition, adding on something with each repetition and ending with the slang word “jet,” which means to leave but also refers to the dark of night that will cover them as they escape.