Sculptures in James Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk

In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, Douglass describes his overseer as “a man of the most inflexible firmness and stone-like coolness” (Andrews 181). He adds that his mistress’s “tender heart became stone” (Andrews 188). When he first tries to free himself from such people, Douglass ends up “all alone, within the walls of a stone prison” (Andrews 208). Throughout these references, the image of stone is repeatedly linked with the stonehearted and dramatic Caucasian oppression of African-Americans. James Baldwin also includes images of stone and wood in his novel, If Beale Street Could Talk. Stone and wood are often mentioned together and are used for a joint purpose as Fonny, the protagonist, uses these materials to create sculptures. The novel’s three mentioned sculptures act as foreshadowing symbols that predict what ultimately happens to their subjects; they intricately detail: the Caucasian oppression each subject faces, their subsequent imprisonment in stone, and their path to freedom.

Fonny gives one of his first sculptures to his girlfriend’s mother; when describing the sculpture, his girlfriend, Tish, says, “It’s not very high, it’s done in black wood. It’s of a naked man with one hand at his forehead and the other half hiding his sex. The legs are…very wide apart, and one foot seems planted, unable to move, and the whole motion of the figure is torment” (Baldwin 38). This sculpture acts as a foreshadowing symbol in the novel because, like the sculpture, Fonny is a vulnerable black man who tries to avoid being raped, but he ends up being tormented and imprisoned in wood and stone. Also, like the sculpture, Fonny is ultimately left in the care and prote...

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...g room” (Baldwin 38). It will likely become quite a conversation piece, encapsulating his life story more artistically and intricately than any family scrapbook or album. It will even link Fonny’s story to Frederick Douglass’s slave narrative, showing how both of these black men faced betrayal, isolation, and metaphorical death through unjust imprisonment in stone. It will also show how they both struggled to find freedom from Caucasian oppression, and how Fonny’s struggle occurred outside the context and time of slavery.

Works Cited

Andrews, William L., ed. The Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology.

New York: Norton & Company, 1998.

Baldwin, James. If Beale Street Could Talk. New York: Dell Publishing, 1974.

“Rape.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

2000 Fourth ed. Bartleby.com. 30 Sept. 2004