Excerpt from James Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man”
“Whatever the fire had left undone, the hands and the knives and the stones of the people
had accomplished. The head was caved in, one eye was torn out, one ear was hanging. But
one had to look carefully to realize this, for it was, now, merely, a black charred object on
the black, charred ground. He lay spread-eagled with what had been a wound between
what had been his legs. ‘They going to leave him here, then?’ Jesse whispered. ‘Yeah’ said
his father, ‘they’ll come and get him by and by. I reckon we better get over there and get
some of that food before it’s all gone.” (Baldwin 1761)
Empty Inside
The passage I have chosen is from “Going to Meet the Man” by James Baldwin. This story
follows Jessie who is a sheriff in the south who suffers from insomnia. In this section of
the story I have chosen the main character Jesse has a flashback to an event his parents
took him to when he was a young kid. The event was a very cruel lynching of a black man.
Back then people like Jesse’s parents and even Jesse where empty on the inside.
One point that exemplifies how truly empty Jesse’s dad is on the inside is when he speaks
to Jesse after the public killing of the black man. When Jesse asks about the man the father
responds in a very odd way. “Yeah’ said his father, ‘they’ll come and get him by and by. I
