Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

(New York: Vintage, 1953), 229

Becca got this for me for my birthday. I can't say I especially enjoyed it—it is tough and it is real. It illustrates how we need to be authentic (and not hypocritical) in our faith, and how we need to be humble. It shows the cost of sin and the price of redemption. It makes you feel the weight of being a parent. The whole book is a string of allusions from the King James Version—it is saturated with scripture.

  • "It might look easy to just sit up there in the pulpit night after night, year in year out, but let them remember the awful responsibility placed on his shoulders by Almighty God—let them remember that God would ask an account of him one day for every soul in his flock, let them remember this when they thought he was hard. Let them remember that the word was hard, that the way of holiness was a hard way." (9)
  • The weight of the responsibility of a father to image the Heavenly Father to his children: "His father was God's minister, the ambassador of the King of Heaven, and John could not bow before the throne of grace without first kneeling to his father." (14)
  • " I'm sure this ain't no way to be. Ain't got no right to have a houseful of children if you don't know how to treat them." (18)
  • "There's a whole lot of things you don't understand, but don't you fret. The Lord'll reveal to you in His own good time everything He wants you to know. You put your faith in the Lord, Johnny, and He'll be sure to bring you out. Everything works together for good for them that love the Lord." (26, cf. Rom-08)
  • Worried not about his brother, but his father's reaction: " Roy got stabbed with a knife. Whatever this meant, it was sure that his father would be at his worst tonight. John walked slowly into the living-room... his father's face was terrible in anger, but now there was more than anger in it... he hated John because John was not lying on the sofa where Roy lay." (36-37)
  • Gabriel is an example of how a father can destroy his children's faith (not dissimilar to Purple Hibiscus): "'What these children hear ain't going to do them near as much harm as what they see'. 'What they see,' his father muttered, 'its a poor man trying to serve the Lord. That's my life.' 'Then I guarantee you,' she said, 'that they going to do their best to keep it from being their life. You mark my words.'" (39)
  • "'I know it looks hard,' said Elijah, 'from the outside, especially when you young. But you believe me, boy, you can't find no greater joy than you find in the service of the Lord... When the Lord saves you, He burns out all that old Adam, He gives you a new mind and a new heart, and then you don't find no pleasure in the world, you get all your joy in walking and talking with Jesus every day.'" (49)
  • Pentecostal theology:
    • Eucharist: "He thought of a First Sunday, a Communion Sunday not long ago when the saints, dressed all in white, ate flat, unsalted Jewish bread, which was the body of the Lord, and drank red grape juice, which was His blood." (51)
    • Justification: "I'm saved and I know I'm saved...My witness is in Heaven and my record is on high." (210)
  • "She had forgotten how to pray. Her mother had taught her that the way to pray was to forget everything and everyone but Jesus; to pour out of the heart, like water from a bucket, all evil thoughts, all thoughts of self, all malice for one's enemies; to come boldly, and yet more humbly than a little child, before the Giver of all good things." (60)
  • "Lord, I have done my best with all the children what you gave me. Lord, have mercy on my children and my children's children." (74)
  • Be careful what you ask for: "The Lord had given her what she had wanted, as was often, she had found, his bewildering method of answering prayer." (77)
  • "All women had been cursed from the cradle; all in one fashion or another, being given the same cruel destiny, born to suffer the weight of men." (78)
  • "He hated the evil that lived in his body, and he feared it, as he feared and hated the lines of lust and longing that prowled the defenseless city of his mind." (89)
  • "A large part of her simplicity consisted in determining not to want what she could not have with ease." (125)
  • Gabriel stole money Deborah had been saving: "sin led to sin" (132)
  • "The whole earth became a prison for him who fled before the Lord. There was peace nowhere, and healing nowhere, and forgetfulness nowhere. In every church he entered, his sin had gone before him." (134)
  • Example of why cohabitating is ill advised: "She did not leave him, because she was afraid of what might happen to him without her. She did not resist him, because he needed her. And she did not press about marriage because, upset as he was about everything, she was afraid of having him upset about her, too." (164-165)
  • "Most spoke of how the heart broke up, but never spoke of how the soul hung speechless in the pause, the void, the terror between the living and the dead; how, all garments rent and cast aside, the naked soul passed over the very mouth of Hell." (176)
  • Elizabeth took care of baby John during the day and then left him home at night to work (imagine!): "She worried about him all night long, of course, but at least at night he was sleeping. She could only pray that the house would not burn down, that he would not fall out of bed, or in some mysterious way turn on the gas-burner, and she had asked the woman next door, who unhappily drank too much, to keep an eye out for him." (178)
  • "'Folks,' said Florence, 'can change their ways as much as they want to. But I don't care how many times you change your ways, what's in you is in you, and it's got to come out.'" (182)
  • Father's anger: "His father's eyes stripped him naked, and hated what they saw." (199)
  • "She kissed him, and she said: 'I'm mighty proud, Johnny. You keep the faith. I'm going to be praying for you till the Lord puts me in my grave.'" (210)
  • "'He going to learn that it ain't all in the singing and the shouting—the way of holiness is a hard way. He got the steep side of the mountain to climb.' 'But he got you there ain't he, to help him when he stumbles, and to be a good example?' 'I'm going to see to it that he walks right before the Lord. The Lord's done put his soul in my charge—and I ain't going to have that boy's blood on my hands.'" (214)
  • "He ain't never spoke because you ain't never wanted to hear. You just wanted Him to tell you your way was right. And that ain't no way to wait on God." (218)
  • Jesus paid the price for us, it costs my life (dialogue on 222-223): "The Devil, he don't ask for nothing less than your life. And he take it, too, and it's lost forever...Ain't nothing but the love of God can make the darkness light."

Characters

  • John Grimes: protagonist, age 14
  • Gabriel Grimes: John’s stepfather, pastor
  • Elizabeth Grimes: John’s mother (married to Gabriel, before that had John with Richard)
  • Florence Grimes: Gabriel’s sister
  • Elisha: young preacher who John idolizes
  • Roy: John’s half-brother and Gabriel’s favorite
  • Deborah: Gabriel’s first wife (childless)
  • Esther: Gabriel’s mistress while married to Deborah, with whom he fathered Royal
  • Rachel: Gabriel and Florence’s mother (born enslaved)

Topic: Novel

Source

Created: 2026-01-01-Thu
Updated: 2026-01-28-Wed