Amiri Baraka's play, Dutchman, was shocking several decades ago when written and first performed, largely because it addresses racial mingling between a Black man and a White woman. Lula, the female protagonist, is Eve with the tainted apple, the temptress who is actually death in disguise, and the symbolic manifestation of White society in its determination to prevent African-American manhood from flourishing or achieving autonomy.
Clay, is a Black man who cannot tolerate being Black in a world that is dominated by Whites and who has a murderous desire to eliminate the White oppressors from his life. Set against Clay is his White counterpart, Lula, who attempts to access Clay's unconscious by getting behind the surface that he presents to the world and forcing him to recognize that he is at heart a murderer. However, as the final scene of the play in which Lula focuses her attention on yet another Black male on the train demonstrates, Lula is compulsive in her attention to "forbidden" males and her desire to test her capacity to challenge their identities (Baraka 1960).
first moment of their encounter to the last.
When Lula and Clay meet on the subway, Baraka (1948) makes it clear that their initial conversation is perceived legitimately by Clay as "pure sex talk." As Lula asks Clay, "You think I want to pick you up, get you to take me somewhere and screw men, huh?" (Baraka 1948) Certainly, Lula's approach to Clay indicates that this is precisely the opinion he is likely to have, given her behavior and her speech in which she accuses him of staring at her lasciviously through the window of the subway train. Thus, Baraka (1948) makes it clear to his audience that it is Lula who assumes the dominant role initially in the encounter.
What begins as a casual but emotionally charged encounter between strangers escalates rapidly into an encounter of a more violent sort. Lula's presentation of stereotypes - s...