The Good Lord Bird

“Lying come natural to all Negroes during slave time, for no man or woman in bondage ever prospered stating their true thoughts to the boss. Much of colored life was an act, and the Negroes that sawed wood and said nothing lived the longest.” 

The theme of authenticity runs throughout the novel. Henry sees lying both as a talent and a necessity for the slaves. He admits that he rarely expresses his true thoughts, so it is unlikely that many people know his true self. Pretending is an act of survival for him and the other slaves. Being true to themselves could end their lives. 

“Your basic white man is a fool.” 

While talking with Fred, Henry realizes that white people share more of their secrets with the Negroes than they do with each other. A slave has thought through, by necessity, every potential consequence before saying anything. White people are not required to think in terms of the consequences of their speech, so they do not measure the things they say as carefully before saying them. 

“Nobody asked the Negro what he thunk about the whole business, by the way, nor the Indian, when I think of it, for neither of their thoughts didn’t count, even though most of the squabbling was about them on the outside”

Henry watches Brown and the Reverend Martin argue about how they can best help the slaves. As usual, no one consults a member of the oppressed race that they are seeking to free. Henry is increasingly bemused and saddened throughout the story as he sees white people who are passionate about freeing the slaves, but never ask the slaves, who are the most effected, for counsel. 

“We’ll be colored when the day’s done, no matter how the cut comes or goes. These fellers can go back to being Pro Slavers anytime they want.”

Bob tells Henry that not every colored man wants to fight for freedom. Bob just wants to live. If he fights for the side that loses, he is a colored man who rebelled. The white men who rebel against slavery do not get punished: they only need to change their minds and say they are fighting against the abolitionists. The stakes are higher for Bob than for Brown. 

“Everybody got God on their side in a war. Problem is, God ain’t tellin’ nobody who He’s for.” 

Henry sees that people on both sides of the slavery conflict claim to be fighting on behalf of God’s will. Brown claims that God wants the end of slavery. Captain Pate believes that it is his mission to help God keep slavery in place. Henry knows that they can’t both be right, because there cannot be two winning sides. This echoes his earlier statement that believers also tend to be lunatics, if his experience with his father and Brown are any indication. 

“There weren’t nothing about himself he didn’t seem to want to talk about, which gived me another lesson on being a girl. Men will spill their guts about horses and their new boots and their dreams to a woman. But if you put ‘em in a room and turn ‘em loose on themselves, it’s all guns, spit, and tobacco.” 

On the trail, Chase talks incessantly to Henry. Henry’s ideas about what it means to be a man will become more serious when he encounters Sibonia, but when he is with Chase, he thinks that being a man requires men to boast, gossip, inflate their own legends when talking to women, and become dirty and violent when amongst other men. Men take comfort in being listened to by women. 

“Some folks’ll climb a tree to tell a lie before they’ll stand on the ground and tell the truth. That could get you hurt in this country.” 

Sibonia reinforces Henry’s idea that telling the truth can be dangerous. But Sibonia never says that survival is less important than truth. She will soon demonstrate that she is committed to the truth at all costs when she refuses to break under interrogation. She will give up her life rather than lie about her role in the rebellion. 

“Be a man.” 

Sibonia tells the terrified boy who is about to be hanged to go to his death with dignity. To show him what she expects from him, she goes first, and leaps through the hole in the gallows. It is at this point that Henry begins to expect more of himself as a man, and to wonder if he would have been able to follow Sibonia’s command. For Sibonia, they are dying on behalf of a cause that is worth their lives, and Henry will come to see part of being a man as doing one’s duty, no matter how unpleasant or frightening it might be. 

“This is what happens when a boy become a man. You get stupider.” 

Henry wants to impress Pie and doesn’t think he can do it as long as she thinks he is a girl. He feels more like a man because he is physically attracted to her and the hormones of puberty are suddenly a constant distraction to him. He considers admitting that he is a man so that he will be placed in the slave pen outside, just so Pie will think he is brave. 

“I was a boy, even though I weren’t dressed like one, but I had my heart broke as a man, and ‘cause of it, for the first time I had my eye on freedom.” 

When Henry sees Pie with Darg, it breaks his heart. The depths of his pain are more profound than the more trivial sorrows of childhood, and so is his reaction. He wants to escape so that he does not have to be around her anymore, and he realizes that his freedom is more important than his infatuation with her. 

“The more bleary-eyed he got, the more he talked like a right regular down-home, pig-knuckle-eatin’ Negro.” 

Frederick Douglass is a masterful orator, but when he drinks, Henry sees that he reverts to colloquial, folksy speech. It sounds more natural to Henry, and he realizes that Douglass is yet another person in the novel who has to play a role at times, and that Frederick Douglass is both a person and a character. Even this revered man acts in ways that make his true identity and character unclear. 

“A bit sad, truth be to tell it, to watch them hundreds of white folks crying for the Negro, for there weren’t hardly ever any Negroes present at most of them gatherings, and them that was there was doodied up and quiet as a mouse. It seemed to me the whole business of the Negro’s life out there weren’t no different than it was out west, to my mind. It was like a big, long lynching. Everybody got to make a speech about the Negro but the Negro.”

Henry watches Brown giving speeches to enthusiastic white audiences in Pennsylvania. Even though they are ostensibly committed to the cause of ending slavery on behalf of the slaves, they never give black people a chance to use their own voices. Both the freedom and enslavement of people of color in America are issues to be solved, or enforced, by whites. Even though Brown is beloved in the east, Henry does not see the easterners as being more respectful of “Negro rights,” beyond the cause abolition. 

“There ain’t nothing gets a Yankee madder than a smart colored person, of which I reckon they figured there was only one in the world, Mr. Douglass.” 

While he is on the speaking tour with Brown, Henry doesn’t talk very much. He sees that even the most well-meaning white people are surprised and perhaps unsettled when a “colored person” speaks as articulately as they do. He is once again playing a part: that of someone who is less intelligent, and who has less to say, than is actually the case, to satisfy the expectations of others. 

“Them fellers was dangerous, but for the simple reason they had a cause. Ain’t no worse thing in the world than fronting up against one of those, for a man with a cause, right or wrong, has got plenty to prove, and will make you suck sorrow if you get in the way of ‘em wrongly.” 

Henry looks at Brown’s army and sees that most of them are educated. They are teachers, intellectuals, and historians. But they are also violent and dangerous because they are fighting on behalf of an ideal that supersedes human life. Sometimes the only way to convince someone that their ideology is correct is through force, or even murder. They are not able to back down in the face of conflict because they believe they have a moral duty to fight. 

“If he say he got a good plan, he got a good plan. That’s more than anyone here got. He done took many a whipping for the colored, and he took it standing up. He got his own wife and children starving at home. He already gived the life of one of his sons to the cause. How many of you has gived yours? He ain’t asking you to feed his children, is he? He ain’t asking you to help him, is he? He’s asking you to help yourself. To free yourself.” 

Harriet Tubman scolds leaders in the crowd for questioning John Brown. She understands that, as crazy as he might be, he is a man of action. He says he cares about their plight, and proves it through his sacrifices. She asks why they cannot do as much for themselves as he is trying to do for them. Without action, their talk of freedom is useless in her view. 

“You done good to speak out. To make some of these fellers stand up as men. But the wind of change got to blow in your heart, too. A body can be whatever they want to be in this world.” 

Tubman appreciates Henry’s courage, but suspects that he is hiding something. She is unsure of why Henry is posing as a girl, but knows that there must be a reason. She is trying to convince Henry that he can live however he chooses, and that if he persists in the charade that he is a girl, that it is his choice, not something that his circumstances demand. 

“You gonna get us all murdered!” 

In Harpers Ferry, Henry is confused when all of the people of color avoid him. John Brown brings danger with him wherever he goes, and despite his insistence that “colored people” are desperate to fight for their freedom, many of them are scared to have him in town. The woman who shouts at Henry is not grateful at the help Brown might offer, but is angry that she is being endangered by their presence. Brown could never be convinced, however, that he wasn’t acting on her behalf. 

“I come to the understanding that maybe what was on the inside was more important, and that your outer covering didn’t count so much as folks thought it did, colored or white, man or woman.” 

For most of the novel, although Henry would prefer freedom to slavery, he does not express a great deal of antipathy towards slavery itself, or imply that he has been treated unjustly despite being a slave. His time with Annie begins to make him want more out of his life, and her attention shows him that he is worth loving, no matter what he looks like.

“I said it should be done. But what should be and could be are two different things.” 

When Brown finally asks Douglass to join the fight, Douglass refuses. He claims that Brown misunderstood Douglass’s anti-slavery speeches as an endorsement for open violence. Henry sees that for all of Douglass’s talking, he does not have a plan for ending slavery. Henry also fails to see any evidence that Douglass is trying to come up with a plan beyond continuing to speak against slavery. He wonders if Douglass ever truly believed that slavery could be eradicated. 

“Some things in this world just ain’t meant to be, not in the times we want ‘em to, and the heart has to hold it in this world as a remembrance, a promise for the world that’s to come. There’s a prize at the end of all of it, but that’s a heavy load to bear.” 

After Douglass refuses to help Brown, Henry sees that Brown is heartbroken. Henry’s own heart is conflicted by his love for Annie. He now understands that they will never be able to be together, because he is black, she is white, and after losing the coming conflict, Brown’s relatives will likely be punished for his actions. Slavery eventually ends, but not on the schedule anyone would have chosen. This is similar to Brown’s idea of being willing to endure anything in this life for glory in Heaven after death. Henry, not being a believer, is unable to take comfort in the idea of distant rewards when he is hurting in the moment. 

“You can play one part in life, but you can’t be that thing. You just playing it. You’re not real.” 

As Henry rides in the back of the wagon, he ponders a future with Annie. He knows that if he does not go back and give Brown the password, Brown will be killed. If he does not go back, he will not be able to respect himself in Annie’s presence, even if she discovered that he was a man and wanted to be with him. He would be playing the part of a brave man, knowing that he had chosen to abandon Annie’s father. 

“She was loving a mirage. I’d have her father’s blood on my hands the rest of my life, laying there like a coward under the hay an not being a natural man, man enough to go back and tell him the words that might help him live five minutes longer, for while he was a fool, his life was dear to him as mine’s was to me, and he’d risked that life many times on my account.” 

Henry is almost free, and he is looking forward to his future with Annie. But when he realizes he forgot to give Brown the password, he knows that he will never be able to live with himself—or feel entitled to Annie’s love and respect—if he does not go back to try to correct the mistake. Even though he knows he might be able to win Annie’s love, he is unwilling to let her love someone who is not real. 

“Whatever you is, Onion, be it full. God is no respecter of persons. I loves you, Onion.” 

Brown reveals that he knew Henry was a boy all along. And he does not think it’s important. For Brown, God views all people as being of equal worth, and he tries to do the same. Brown, for all of his irrational acts and his tendency to believe that God is speaking to him, practices what he preaches. He encourages Henry to simply be himself, wholeheartedly, once he knows what that means.