August Wilson's play Joe Turner's Come and Gone

This study will examine August Wilson's play Joe Turner's Come and Gone, focusing on the characters' search for their "song." The play offers a number of definitions of what this "song" is, but it is roughly equivalent to one's individual spirit or purpose in life. The study will consider in greater depth what this song is, its significance, which characters have found theirs, which are still searching, and which will probably never find it. The thesis of the study will be that those who have found their songs have come to a state of acceptance about life and its difficulties, and have as a result discovered within themselves what the others are seeking in vain outside themselves. Those who have not found their songs are still doing battle with life, with people, and with themselves. The significance of the song, then, is found in the fact that the individual must discover his or hers in order to be an authentic human being and in order to have any chance for love and happiness in the world.

Wilson in his introduction to the play tells us that the finding of one's song is an individual process which has to do with one's reclamation of his or her identity:

From the deep and near South the sons and daughters of newly freed slaves wander into the city. Isolated, cut off from memory, having forgotten the names of the gods and only guessing at their faces, they arrive dazed and stunned, their heart kicking in their chest with a song worth singing. . . . They search for ways to

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to find. As we read, Mattie "had suffered many defeats in her search [for love and companionship], and though not always uncompromising, still believes in the possibility of love" (Wilson 21). Loomis would seem to be the last man for Mattie, but she finds him as that one---if he is---just at the very moment that she stops so desperately searching. Of course, Bynum has played a part in her discovery of Loomis, for it was Bynum---singing his binding song---who helped Mattie with a benevolent ritual (Wilson 74). Bynum found his own song as a binder of people who are meant to be together (Wilson 9-10), and he comes by the song through such a shining man, and it appears that in seeing Loomis as another shining man, Bynum has had his own song validated: I asked [my father] about the shiny man and he told me he was the One Who Goes Before and Shows the Way. Said there was lots of shiny men and if I ever saw one again before I died then I would know that my song had ben accepted and worked its full power in the world and I could lay down and die a happy man (Wilson 10). Seth is a character who has not found his song and probably will not if he insists on maintaining his nasty, controlling attitude toward everyone around him, but, aga

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