Going To Meet The Man

For Jesse, early exposure to sexualized violence against black bodies links the abhorrence of that violence with sexual arousal and his own masculinity. Torturing Mrs. Julia Blossom's grandson in the jail as an adult stirs "something deep in [Jesse] and deep in his memory" (233). This memory of witnessing the lynching of a black man accused of rape, evokes "an overwhelming fear" (239), which "contain[s] a curious and dreadful pleasure" (239). Similarly, when using the thought of raping a black woman to arouse himself, Jesse's excitement feels "more like pain" (229) and, when torturing Mrs. Blossom's grandson in the jail, Jesse begins to "hurt all over with that peculiar excitement" (232). The man's public castration acts as a form of community-building for the white people involved and makes Jesse see his father as a larger-than-life hero and his mother as "more beautiful" (247) than ever. Jesse hears his parents have sex the night of the lynching, thus tying the violence done to black bodies inextricably with sexual arousal in Jesse. His predilection for violating black women and using the phallic cattle prod to torture black men demonstrate as much.

Growing up in a white-supremacist society, Jesse feels that white people are inherently good and black people inherently "fight against God and go against the rules laid down in the Bible" (235). Jesse considers himself "a good man, a God-fearing man" (230) who has "tried to do his duty all his life" (230). Jesse frequently wonders if black people will ever "learn" (229) to be good (as Jesse sees “good”). As a white person in a position of authority, Jesse feels that violence is the only possible means of controlling the black population. Jesse laments a time when whites practiced discrimination and told racist jokes without fear. He feels whites should "form a posse" and search the homes of black people for weapons. They won't do this, though, for fear of bringing "the bastards from the North down on their backs" (237).

By focusing on the white characters in this story, Baldwin shows how anonymizing and dehumanizing black people allows white people to treat them without regard. Most of the story's black characters—Mrs. Julia Blossom's grandson, the lynched black man, Jesse's childhood friend, Otis, and the anonymous women Jesse falsely arrests and rapes—do not speak. There are only two instances of black speech in the story. One is a patronizing representation of the speech of "good" (236) black people through Jesse's racist filter: "From the bottom of our hearts, we thanks you" (236). By taking away speech or proper representation, Jesse's power goes unchecked.

The other instance of black speech, though, by Mrs. Blossom's grandson, shows an attempt to shift the power away from Jesse. The young man calls Jesse "white man" (233) derisively and threatens that the protests won't stop until they drive every white person "stark raving mad" (233). Additionally, the story's ending suggests that a group of black people may be coming to Jesse's house to pay retribution for Jesse's brutality.