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Emotions, feelings and moods in 'If He Holler's Let Him Go'.…
Emotions, feelings and moods in 'If He Holler's Let Him Go'.
Anger and Hatred
Robert Jones, the novels protagonist, has moments of blind rage and hatred towards the white population of America. He hates them because of their attitudes and actions towards him. He hates them because they judge him and expect the worse all while oppressing and limiting him. Even when fulfilling his role as leaderman he is angered by the fact that his race and the limitations that come with it prevent him from doing his job to the best of his ability.
For example the difficulty he had getting a tacker for one of his workers all because they were black and the whites refused to work with them.
'If I couldn't get the work done I'd have to take Kelly's riding; and in order to get it done I had to eat everybody else's. I had my usual once-a-day urge to tell them to take their leaderman job and shove it.' (31)
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Fear
Racial stereotypes and myths, such as the myth of the Black rapist, lead to fear between the black and white communities.
The white community had falsified fears about black men being violent criminals. They also feared the oppressed rising up and redistributing the power and disrupting the status quo. This fear was not limited to the ethnic minorities but also the working class as a whole and the influence of communists.
The myth of the Black rapist and the innocent white women, frequently a white female belle character, was commonplace within American society and culture at the time.
'...as if she was a naked virgin and I was King Kong.' (23) Here we see Madge faking her fear of Rob however the act is believed by the workers around her because the myth of the black rapist and the negative stereotype of violent black men was commonly used by the white community at that time. For example Richard Wright also focuses on it in his novel Native Son.
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The black community lived in constant fear of the power that any white person could have over them. They feared because they could lose their job, be put in prison or lynched from one white persons word.
In the opening the chapter we learn that Bob is living with fear. He wakes up fearing what could happen to him. These opening moments show the mental toll that the instability and risks the black community faced had on them.
'For a moment I felt torn all loose inside , shrivelled, paralysed , as if after a while I'd have to get up and die.' (3)
The fear that Bob faces continues in the novel and shortly his fears are realised:
'All of a sudden I'd got that crazy, scared feeling I'd waked up with that morning. It had happened in a second; I'd lost my job and I was facing the draft...' (36)
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Bob also makes it clear that he has had these fears since the start of the war. Therefore he could be scared of the draft and hos expendable a black man was to America during wartime.
'I found a spot and a parked and we scrambled out, nervous because we were late, and belligerent because we didn't want anybody to say anything about it.' (17)
Love/Lust
Throughout the novel we see Bob show interest in female couples. It is debatable however if it is ever love or just lust.
In the first couple of pages Bobs self-conscious is thinking about women. There is a women called Susie and he reveals that he has previously slept with his neighbour Ella Mae.
The most troubling interactions Bob has is with Madge, the white female worker. When Bob goes to the hotel were Madge is staying his feelings don't correctly conform to love or lust. When he describes her physically it is clear that he does not find her physically attractive. What he lust for in this situation is the power over her. To have that physical and sexual power over a white person is what excites him.
Similarly Madge has similar feelings. When Bob is fighting with her it is clear that she is feeling some kind of lust or arousal.
'You can't have none unless you catch me' she teased.' (182)#
However once it again it is not because of physical attraction but the feeling of having power over another person. Madge knows that with one word she could destroy Bob's life for what they were doing.
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'She was really a beat biddy ,trampish-looking and pure rebbish; and since I'd already lost my live-wire edge, I wondered what the hell I'd seen in her in the first place.' (181)
The character who Bob could be seen to genuinely be in love with is Alice. In the first chapter we hear how proud he is to have her as his girl.
'It set me up to have a chick like her. It gave me personal pride to have he as my girl.' (8)
However this could actually just be lust for the higher social power she gave him amongst white people due to her lighter complexion.
For example later on he says..
'It really galled me to have a white guy take my chick out on a date.' (176)
Here Bob doesn't seem to care that he may have lost Alice or that she was going out with another man. What really angered him was the fact that Alice was with a white man.
'I knew I could marry Alice- the chick loved me.'(188) This suggests that he doesn't actually love her and it is more what she can provide him with that attracts him.