Black People Of Harlem example essay topic

When reading the detective genre many conventions are used to communicate various ideas to its readers. In Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes, the author relies heavily upon tone / mood to express the main message. The story takes place in the heart of Harlem where crime is accepted, money rules all, and death by violence is common. The focal point of this novel is a "misplaced" bale of cotton. As you read further into the novel you realize a sort of motif of other things also being "misplaced".

It seems as if everyone in the novel is motivated or inspired in some way to place everything where it belongs. The two main characters Gravedigger and Coffin Ed are driven by crime. Their highest desire is to right the wrong in the streets of Harlem-especially by returning the money to the rightful owners. The black people of Harlem are inspired by the fact that they will be where they belong when they are at their home in Africa. The white people of Harlem are motivated by the idea that with blacks being returned to the south balance will be restored among the people.

By the end of the novel I identified the reoccurring theme as being "everything has it place". The author suggests an inspirational / motivational mood to express the main message of everything having its place. Throughout the novel there are different levels of intensity within the mood. For example, whenever Grave Digger and Coffin Ed are speaking of returning the money to the people of Harlem, the feeling of inspiration and motivation to do right is extremely high. When Grave Digger and Coffin Ed are at the site of the Back-To-Africa movement the tone of inspiration is full of compassion: They were silent for a moment with the rain pouring over them thinking of these eighty-seven families who had put down their thousand-dollar grubstake's on a dream. They knew that these families had come by their money the hard way.

To many, it represented the savings of a lifetime. To most it represented long hours of hard work at menial jobs. None could afford to lose it (26). Grave Digger and Coffin Ed feel they owe it to the black people of Harlem to see that justice is served. The money being returned to the people of Harlem is what compels the two detectives to crack down on the scum of Harlem.

Another instance of Grave Digger and Coffin Ed's inspirational moments of restoring the money is when they are talking to Sarah in her apartment: "And we don't give a damn about Deke either. But eighty-seven grand of colored people's hard earned money got lost in the caper and we want to get it back" (53). Himes does an incredible job of setting the inspirational tone for his readers by allowing the main characters to display an abundance of sentiment for the task that they must complete. When the black people of Harlem decide to take a stand and be in command of their lives, the main message of everything having its place has an immense impact on the tone of the story. Perhaps the most crucial proposal of everything having its place takes place when the people of Harlem decide they should go back to their home; Africa. As they are signing up at the Back-To-Africa movement the people realize they aren't welcomed nor do they belong in America: " Africa to them was a big free land which they could proudly call home, for there were buried bones of their ancestors, there lay roots of their families, and it was inhabited by the descendants of those same ancestors-which made them related by both blood and race" (26).

If nothing else displays the motif of everything having its place that quote should have solidified it. It shows that the people are searching for their place because they are in a frantic need to be united into a community. At the movement when Reverend O'Malley is telling the people the benefits of moving back to Africa versus staying in America, living impoverished, the tone of the story remains at one of inspiration: "By that time you will be harvesting your second crop in Africa, living in warm sunny houses where the only fire you need will be for cooking, where we " ll have our own governments and our own rulers-black like us" (7). Himes reveals to his readers just how important it is that the black people of Harlem feel that they belong somewhere, preferably in their right place.

The last major instance of things having their place is when the white people of Harlem try to convince the black people that they don't belong in the North. At these points in the story the level of inspiration is at it's lowest level of intensity because there is little hope for the blacks. The hope that does remain for them is one of falsehood. When Colonel Calhoun is advertising for the Back-To-The-Southland movement he embellishes how great the south will be for the blacks: ... the other depicting fat, grinning colored people sitting at tables laden with food, driving about in cars as big as Pullman coaches black children entering modernistic schools equipped with stadiums and swimming - pools, elderly people clad in Brooks Brothers suits and Saks Fifth Avenue dresses filing into a church that looked astonishingly like Saint Peter's Cathedral in Rome with its caption: The Happy South (56).

The colonel will say just about anything to swindle the people of Harlem out of their money and get them to go to the South where he can control them. He even tries to convince Barry from the Back-To-Africa movement that the black people belong back in the south: " The South is the place for them, the good old reliable Southland. We love and take care of our darkies" (60). The whites believe that the blacks should be sent back to the South where their labor is needed and they can keep them oppressed.

Although the white people are only trying to put the blacks in the South for their personal benefit the idea still goes along with the main message of everything having its place. Dealing with the detective genre one would think that the main message would be one with a negative connotation because of the conventions that come along with the detective genre. Murder, crime, and violence seem to be the backbone of the detective genre but the inspirational / motivational mood became apparent to me once I looked past just the symbolism of the bale of cotton. Himes does something that isn't usually done with the detective genre, he doesn't let the dark and gritty concepts associated with detective stories stop him from letting positive aspects shine through. The inspirational tone of the story still remains even though the blacks of Harlem don't make it to Africa. Though at the end of the novel everything doesn't end up where it belongs most of the important things do: the money is returned to the people of Harlem and the scum of Harlem are put behind bars or put to death thus reiterating the main message of everything having its place..