Joe Turner's Come and Gone
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Metaphor is central to literature. This is particularly true in poetry, where the poet attempts to create from words an emotional/intellectual image for something larger. That "larger" thing is essentially about the meaning of some aspect of life as the poet sees it and wishes to share with others. Poet August Turner is also a playwright - and he says that, when writing a play, "[t]he mental process is poetic: you use metaphor and condense" (1389). The central metaphor in Wilson's 1988 play Joe Turner's Come and Gone is song. Every character either has his or her "song" - or is searching for it. The purpose of this paper will be to examine those characters and their songs - the lost, the searched for, and the found - and to see how this metaphor serves the purpose of Wilson's overall theme in Joe Turner's Come and Gone. The plot of the play has episodic slices-of-life turning upon variations on male-female searches for partners. Seth and Bertha Holly own a Pittsburgh boarding house, where full-time and temporary tenants reside. A stranger, Herald Loomis, comes bringing a daughter - they are looking for his wife, Martha, who left several years earlier. Seth and Bertha know who this woman is, but Seth doesn't trust Loomis, so the meeting is delayed while tensions mount. Seth finally makes Loomis leave - but not before a final-scene meeting between Loomis and Martha leads to a bloody (but not mortal) "reconciliation" of sorts. In a related subplot, a woman abandon
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terally, at various key points in the play - onstage and off. The play begins with Seth Holly watching the offstage Bynum singing his way through a voodoo ritual (1390-1391). One of the turning points in the action, when Seth comes into conflict with Loomis, is instigated by Bynum leading Seth and the other boarders in a "juba" song - a crisis that brings down the Act I curtain (1415-1417). We learn from Loomis about his imprisonment in Act II when he is provoked by Bynum singing about Joe Turner (1422-1426).
Bynum is not the only "voice." Young Zonia, Herald Loomis' daughter, gets to sing a little song of loss, too:
Tomorrow, tomorrow
Tomorrow never comes (1404).
Her song is one of innocence - an innocence that attracts the boy-next-door, Reuben. The two of them "know" their song at once: they can find themselves in each other's friendship. While the adults play out their games of sex drives and social frustration, Zonia and Reuben are able to simply kiss and make the promise:
REUBEN: When I get grown, I come looking for you.
ZONIA: Okay (1431).
Bynum and Zonia, both innocents in their own ways, may be the "voices" of song, but they are not the only one to use it. Jeremy, a young worker from down-South, depe
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Approximate Word count = 2019
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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