Go Tell It on the Mountain

“There had never been a time when John had not sat watching the saints rejoice with terror in his heart, and wonder.”

For John, terror and wonder are never far apart. His fierce belief in the truth of Christianity fills him with wonder but also terrifies him, due to his fear that he is a sinner. John has been raised in a religious family and in a religious community so he cannot envisage a world in which God is not real. At the same time, his sexual thoughts about men make him worry that he will be considered a sinner by his friends, his family, and by God. Terror and wonder are common themes in John’s life for the same reason, leaving him in awe of the pain and suffering he may be forced to endure through God. 

“‘Your Daddy beats you,’ she said, ‘because he loves you.’”

Elizabeth’s life has been marked by tragedy. She was taken from her loving father by her severe aunt at a young age. Later, her lover and the father of her son died by suicide. When she married Gabriel, her initial joy was overtaken by the brutal reality of his abusive personality. At each point in her life, Elizabeth has been forced to conflate love and violence. She passes this conflation on to the next generation, and her children learn that love and violence are never far apart. Elizabeth’s lessons about love and violence are part of a self-perpetuating cycle of tragic violence in her society.

“And then everyone, all the white people inside, would know that he was not used to great buildings, or to many books, and they would look at him with pity.”

John preemptively denies himself enjoyment because of his experiences of racism. His life as a young African American man has taught him to expect discrimination in his society. As such, he refuses to enter a store in certain neighborhoods because he knows that he will be treated differently. Racism is not just an active individual threat against John. Instead, the novel shows how passive racism forces him to change his behavior and deny himself pleasure because of his past experiences. 

“Roy got stabbed with a knife. Whatever this meant, it was sure that his father would be at his worst to-night.”

Roy is stabbed with a knife, but John only views his brother’s pain in terms of how Gabriel will turn this around on him. Gabriel favors Roy and treats John with contempt. John is not aware that he is not Gabriel’s biological son, so he has been traumatized into expecting unfair and inexplicable abuse from Gabriel whenever Roy has made a mistake. John suffers unduly and lives in fear of the abuse that he cannot explain or understand. 

“But his father was only a caretaker in the house of God.”

Gabriel blames everyone else for his failures but even he views his successes in bitter terms. Although he was lauded as a young preacher, he has not quite hit the heights of professional success that he might once have expected. He is “only a caretaker in the house of God” (31), not leading a church or a congregation of his own. He blames his family for holding him back, refusing to entertain the possibility that he is simply not as good or inspiring as other preaches, that his hypocrisy might hold him back, or that God simply does not favor him. Gabriel’s resentment is fueled by his narcissism and arrogance.

“If he did not sing they would be upon him, but his heart told him that he had no right to sing or to rejoice.”

Unlike his father, John struggles with hypocrisy. He worries that his sexual thoughts make him a sinner; so, when he attends a church congregation, he cannot bring himself to sing with the other people. John fears that he has no right to put himself alongside the people who obey the rules of Christianity; he does not know how often people like Gabriel bend and break these rules for their own benefit. Whereas many people who claim to be good Christians behave in an immoral fashion, they are able to perform the role of upstanding people. John cannot perform this hypocritical act, which distinguishes him from his peers and his family. 

“She knew that Gabriel rejoiced, not that her humility might lead her to grace, but only that some private anguish had brought her low: her songs revealed that she was suffering, and this her brother was glad to see.”

Florence is caught in an impossible position. She is worried that she is terminally ill and she must set her affairs in order. Part of this process is atoning for her sins in church and returning to God before her imminent death. However, doing so allows her brother Gabriel to feel as though he has beaten her in some way. Gabriel relishes her suffering and Florence is forced to decide whether she cares more about her bond with God or her hatred for her brother. She finds a third way forward, returning to the church but exposing her brother’s hypocrisy. Gabriel may enjoy watching his sister suffer in church, but she is sure that she can return his suffering tenfold, if she pleases. 

“Gabriel was the apple of his mother’s eye.”

Florence’s animosity toward her brother is the product of decades of ill will between the two siblings. For years, Gabriel was given all the opportunities and love that Florence felt should be shared with her. Their mother Rachel lavished praise on Gabriel and sent him to school, even though he had no interest in education and repaid her with unruly behavior. The well-behaved, respectable Florence received nothing for her good behavior while her brother misbehaved and then grew up into a man who scolds the world for its immorality. Florence resents Gabriel’s hypocrisy because she has seen the privileges he has enjoyed throughout his life. Their relationship is suggestive of John and Roy’s future relationship.

“Now she was an old woman, and all alone, and she was going to die.”

Florence has traveled so far during her lifetime. She has endured many hardships, only to suffer a similar fate to her mother. She will die alone in a society that treats her with contempt because of her race. Though decades have passed since Rachel’s death, the society is still rife with the violence and racism which existed before the American Civil War and the official end of slavery. Florence suffering a similar fate to her mother shows how pain can be passed down across the generations without real progress being made.

“Why had he preferred her mother and her brother, the old, black woman, and the low, black man, while she, who had sought only to walk upright, was come to die, alone and in poverty, in a dirty, furnished room?”

The continued unfairness of the society illustrates the problems the characters face and the hypocrisy of the religion practiced by men like Gabriel. Characters like Florence, Elizabeth, and Deborah can do everything in the supposedly correct way. They adhere to society’s rules and try to live their lives according to the Bible. Nevertheless, their lives are marked by tragedy. For all the good behavior, they are destined to die alone and in poverty in dirty rooms. The rank unfairness of this illustrates the lie at the heart of the society: morality and success are not related.

“He longed, nearly, for death, which was all that could release him from the cruelty of his chains.”

Gabriel cannot empathize with other people. He is so self-centered and arrogant that he listens to his mother’s stories about life as a slave and compares her trauma to his own personal problems. Gabriel drinks heavily and lives an immoral life but he blames other people for judging him. Gabriel’s cruel chains are simply people judging him as a consequence of his actions. He equates this personal responsibility with his mother’s traumatic experience of slavery, illustrating how he neither values her pain nor cares for anything but himself. 

“Sin is the only heritage of the natural man.”

During Gabriel’s sermon, he describes to the congregation how sin is passed down across generations as a form of heritage. The audience is aware of Gabriel’s past, and the reader knows about his abusive behavior toward his son John. As such, Gabriel’s sermon reveals his hypocrisy through dramatic irony. The audience can see the hollowness of the words, preached by a man who does not live by the same rules that he seeks to impose on others. Gabriel might be telling the congregation how to avoid sin, but he does not consider any of his own sinful behavior to be real. 

“For the first time since he had known her he touched her, putting his hands on her shoulders, thinking what untender touch these shoulders had once known, and how she would be raised now in honor.”

Gabriel’s arrogance means that he views himself as the cure for Deborah’s shame. He believes that he can redeem her reputation simply by marrying her and being seen by her. To him, this public performance of religion is more important than understanding or relating to Deborah and her pain. Though he thinks himself as better than the other people in the community who believe that Deborah being raped has broken her in some way, his actions show that he believes exactly the same time. The only difference is that Gabriel arrogantly positions himself as the glorious solution to her debasement. 

“His later memory of this sermon was like the memory of a storm.”

Gabriel smugly reflects on his own sermons as though they are a force of nature. He equates his sermons with a storm, remembering them both in a similar way as though they are something which is delivered by God to the people of Earth. Like a storm, Gabriel sees his words as unstoppable and natural. His choice of analogy for his sermons not only reveals how he sees himself as a powerful person; it also absolves him of any responsibility, as he is simply an act of God rather than a man delivering a speech. 

“That river, his infernal need, rose, flooded, sweeping him forward as though he were a long-drowned corpse.”

Gabriel again absolves his responsibility by comparing his actions to nature. His affair with Esther is described from Gabriel’s perspective as though it were a river flowing, carrying him along as though he were a helpless and passive corpse. Gabriel does not acknowledge that he is an active participant in the affair as doing so would force him to admit that he is acting in an immoral fashion. Instead, he blames Esther for seducing him. Even when Gabriel is committing a sin, he views himself as a helpless saint. 

“I ain’t ashamed of it—I’m ashamed of you—you done made me feel a shame I ain’t never felt before.”

Gabriel weaponizes shame to discipline other people and validate his hatred. He shames people like Deborah, Elizabeth, and John, thereby justifying his physical and emotional abuse. Esther is the only person who fights back against his aggressive hypocrisy. She turns the shame around and attacks Gabriel, telling him that she is ashamed to be with him. Gabriel remembers this insult many years later as the one time when his ego was fractured by a woman he considered to be beneath him. Thanks to the letter to Florence, Esther can continue her attack on Gabriel’s hypocrisy long after her death. 

“Many times he had thought to unburden his heart to her. But she gave him no opportunity, never said anything that might allow him the healing humility of confession.”

Gabriel’s hypocrisy is highlighted in the way he blames other people for his sins. He blames Deborah for being silent; she knew about his affair, his illegitimate child, and his theft of her savings but she remained quiet. In Gabriel’s mind, Deborah has denied him the opportunity to confess to his sins. Even though he is the sinner, he blames her and absolves himself. Gabriel’s egotistic identity means that he cannot conceive of himself as a sinner so he must blame others for his immorality. 

“This, as Elizabeth later considered it, was the first in the sordid series of mistakes which was to cause her to fall so low.”

Elizabeth’s life, like the lives of many characters, has been marked by numerous tragedies. She believes that she has fallen low in the past, for example, so she stays with her abusive husband because she does not want to risk being alone again. Elizabeth differs from people like Gabriel because she is determined to learn from her past. Whereas Gabriel uses his past to justify his actions in the present, Elizabeth’s introspection adds nuance and context to her behavior. 

“But all the same, mister, I wasn’t there.”

Richard is arrested for a crime he did not commit. The police savagely beat him in an attempt to force him to confess to the crime. Their racism means that Richard will never be able to escape the pain and brutality of existence. If he somehow escapes this situation, his race means that he will be attacked again in the future. Even so, he denies his involvement in the crime. Richard is not just denying the crime, he is also rebuking the state of the world. He was not there, and he never will be; all he can do is stand up for himself, even though he knows that he will be attacked again.

“Folks sure better not do in the dark what they’s scared to look at in the light.”

The public performance of piety is contrasted with the private perspectives of the characters and their relationships with guilt, shame, and sin. Gabriel performs his religion as a way to distract from his hypocrisy. Meanwhile, characters like Elizabeth and Florence quietly reflect on the tragedies in their lives and try to atone for their supposed sins. While Gabriel keeps his sins in the dark, Florence and Elizabeth are forced to deal with the tragedies which have taken place in the light. 

“Slow tears rose to her eyes; of joy, for what she had come to; of anguish, for the road that had brought her here.”

Elizabeth weeps with joy when Gabriel proposes because she believes that God has delivered to her a second chance. Her joy creates a contrast between Gabriel’s promises in the past and the abusive reality in the present. The contrast exists within her tears, too, of joy and anguish. However, the contrast helps to justify Elizabeth’s decision to stay in her abusive marriage as she does not want to risk exposing her children to the dangers and misery of poverty once again. She accepts the pain as necessary and bears the burden of responsibility herself. 

“In the silence, then, that filled the void, John looked on his father.”

John experiences a religious vision when he steps on to the threshing floor. In the vision, he believes that he sees his father, Gabriel. Afterwards, the sight of his father makes him believe that he has learned something about the truth of the world. However, John is in an impossible position. He does not know that Gabriel is not his father, so any vision in which Gabriel appears as his father is fundamentally erroneous. John’s revelation is built on shifting foundations through no fault of his own and his future and his happiness are conditioned on secrets which have been withheld from him.

“And then, as his father did not speak, he repeated his father’s text: ‘My witness is in Heaven and my record is on high.’”

John tries to resolve his acrimonious relationship with Gabriel by using Gabriel’s own words. Whereas John believes that this demonstrates that he has listened to his father and that he respects his father’s words, Gabriel recognizes an awkward subtext. John’s words remind Gabriel that God will ultimately judge him, and that God knows about his past sins. Rather than endear himself to his father, John accidently reminds Gabriel of his hypocrisy and his past failures.