Joe Turner's Come and Gone

In August Wilson's (1988) drama Joe Turner's Come and Gone presents two worlds in North and South America early in the twentieth century. The South still tyrannizes African Americans and unjustly imprisons them as slave labor despite emancipation coming a half century earlier. The North represents a lure to dissatisfied African Americans in the South, promising jobs and material success because of the burgeoning industrial revolution. These distinctions are important to one of Wilson's main points in the play. Wilson argues that African Americans will never be free until they recognize that in a capitalist society those who profit must exploit the labor of others. Wilson uses character and diction to demonstrate that both South and North America represent the same potential for being enslaved to African Americans.

Herald Loomis was captured by Joe Turner, binding him to a chain gang and hard labor for seven years. Loomis, though looking for his wife, wanders North in search of her and a better life in the industrial

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Category: Literature - J