"The Dutchman" and "Blues for Mister Charlie"
For many African-American writers and dramatists, the issue of race and how it impacts on human relationships and societal perceptions is a theme of enormous significance. Two of the most powerful literary voices in the African-American community are those of James Baldwin and Amiri Baraka (formerly known as LeRoi Jones). Both Baldwin and Baraka have written prolifically and in a variety of mediums. This brief report however, will compare and contrast a single work by each author. Baraka's play, The Dutchman and Baldwin's play, Blues for Mister Charlie address the ways in which violence affects the lives of ordinary African-American men and women and in which a fundamental racism in American society renders these individuals vulnerable to violence.
W. J. Weatherby (1989) commented with respect to Blues for Mister Charlie that when the play was first performed, theatergoers and critics alike received it positively. At the core of the play, in the view of this particular analyst, is Baldwin's determination to express the outraged thoughts and emotions that had blazed within seemingly placid African-Americans for years. Some critics regarded the White characters in the play as little more than stereotypes, however, while others felt that Baldwin had not fully mastered the form of the drama.
Baldwin's Blues for Mister Charlie is set in a small town in the Deep South. Baldwin (1964) commented in the notes for the play that it was based very distantly on the case of Emmett Till, a Black youth murdered in Mississippi in 1955. The play takes place in Plaguetown, which Baldwin (1964) identified as a town in which the plague was race and our concept of Christianity. In the story, a young Black man has returned to this town after a six-year absence. He is a drug addict who comes home to recover and rebuild his life but instead is killed in an act of senseless and unnecessary viol...