August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, located in a Pittsburgh boarding house of the 1910s, dramatizes Bynum and Loomis’s search for their African identities. In the process of reaching self-fulfillment, the two black men explore the African historical, cultural, and spiritual tradition and build their own myth, rejecting Christianity which is the religion of their community. Many critics assert that the play, celebrating Bynum and Loomis’s myth of African American’s cultural and spiritual autonomy, endorses the African tradition over Christianity. This paper will explicate Bynum and Loomis’s myth in the context of the play’s spatial atmosphere of the Pittsburgh boarding house as well as the early 20th century America, in connection with Christianity as well as the African traditional myth. Explicating Wilson’s the so-called “signature play,” this paper will enhance the understanding of the playwright’s dramatic world.
In contrast to the argument that the play endorses the two black men’s self-realizing myth, the myth neither appeals to the community nor provides a clear direction leading the community into the future. Their myth doesn’t liberate them from their various obsessions and prejudices, especially against Christianity. Bynum’s obsession with the African black art and Loomis’ image of enslaving ‘White God’ isolate them from the black community. The community regards Bynum and Loomis as weird outsiders. While identifying God with Joe Turner who has enslaved him for several years and antagonizing the Christian tradition, Loomis loses the opportunity to rebuild his broken self and enliven the African tradition in a more progressive way. Even though Bynum celebrates Loomis as “the shiny man,” “One Who Goes Before and Shows the Way,” Loomis doesn’t lead any member of his community forward except for Mattie, whom he has sexually exploited.
The two black men’s myth excludes women, but the alternative to their myth is found in the female characters: Bertha, Martha, and Molly. Bertha, the wife of Seth, the boarding house owner, Martha, Loomis’s wife, and Molly, a liberated new woman, provide more collaborating visions of life than the two black men can. Bertha provides the laughter of reconciliation and celebrating life of the black community. Martha, a pious Christian, proves that even a black woman leaving the hometown can lead a healthy life in a big city. Molly, rejecting Bynum’s sorcery as spooky, shows that a black single woman can lead an independent life. Ironically, Bynum and Loomis’s myth demonstrates that the blind rejection of the white culture including Christianity, inhibits growth and development of the black community as well as one’s spiritual life.