Rite of Passage.

With the publication of the Library of America editions of Richard Wright's major works in 1991, an important new phase of Wright scholarship began - the arduous tasks of first recovering and then evaluating the texts which Wright actually wrote and which editors often altered because they were uncomfortable with certain aspects of Wright's extraordinary vision of African American life. The recent publication of Rite of Passage, a novella which Wright completed in 1945 and later tried to include in Eight Men shortly before his death, is another significant step in restoring Wright's work for contemporary readers. This book, which Arnold Rampersad in the Afterword rightly claims "is unmistakably a story from the heart of Wright's consciousness and creativity" (117), has languished for many years in the Rare Archives Room at Yale's Beinecke Library and is now made available by HarperCollins in an inexpensive hardcover edition.

Anyone familiar with Wright's fiction can immediately recognize in this story unmistakable signs of Wright's style and vision. From the opening scenes, in which the protagonist, Johnny Gibbs, is awakened from his daydreams by the loud "BRAAAAAAAAAG" (2) of a school bell and later by the equally jarring "BRRIIINNNNNNNG!" (23) of a doorbell announcing the presence of people who could destroy his young life, the reader is clearly reminded that this book is cut from a bolt of imaginative cloth very similar to that used in Native Son, Black Boy, The Outsider, and Eight Men. Like Bigger Thomas, Johnny Gibbs seeks "a new life" (57) in violence because he finds himself trapped in a society which denies him most of the things which build and sustain human identity - family, friends, work, and self-esteem. Feeling a deep sense of "estrangement" (52) from the dominant white culture because it is intent on convincing him that "he was nothing, a nobody" (52), he rebels and, like Cross Damon and Fred Daniels, retreats into an underground world, a juvenile gang whose meeting place is in the basement of a school, a "dirty room" behind the furnace which gang members characterize as the "hole" (61). Like all of Wright's central characters, and particularly the hero of Black Boy/American Hunger, Johnny is driven throughout the story by various forms of "hunger," ranging from his need for physical nourishment to his profound desire for kinship and love.

Rite of Passage, like "Big Boy Leaves Home" and so much of Wright's other best work, stresses the existential fragility of its protagonist's identity with a narrative that describes how his life is completely transformed by a single dramatic event. Like Dave Saunders, who is detached from a relatively stable and familiar life when he accidentally kills his boss's mule, and like Bigger Thomas, Cross Damon, and Fred Daniels, whose lives are forever changed when they are accused of breaking the laws of racist societies which systematically deny them any legal protection, Johnny Gibbs finds his old life suddenly dissolved when he returns home from school one day to discover that he is in fact a foster child who has been living since infancy with people who are not his biological parents. Due to a bureaucratic "policy" (25) which defies any rational explanation, he is ordered to move to a new foster home of people he has never met. He is therefore confronted by the same painful dilemma which troubles the protagonist of Black Boy: Should he accept an identity arbitrarily constructed and imposed upon him by a social world which is unable to perceive him as a human being, or should he rebel absolutely, completely rejecting the standards of conventional society, and begin the task of building a radically isolated self? Not surprisingly, he chooses the latter alternative and by the end of the book is described as "alone," attempting "to make a life for himself by trying to reassemble the shattered fragments of his lonely heart" (115).

Put another way, Rite of Passage is a powerful inversion of the Alger myth. Wright, who, as Michel Fabre has aptly observed in The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright, was as a young man "an avid reader of Horatio Alger," and who wrote a review of the complete works of Horatio Alger in the same year that he completed Rite of Passage, cleverly echoes and reverses the Alger myth throughout the book. In the story's first chapter Johnny Gibbs seems a likely candidate for Algeresque success, since he is a bright, hard-working boy on the margins of American life. A straight-A student, he is much more interested in his report card than the knives which some children bring to school. Education means to him precisely what it means to all of Alger's heroes; it is an effective means of achieving not only material success but, more importantly, self-esteem and personal transformation. Furthermore, school provides Johnny with another essential component of the Alger myth, a patron who will help him rise in life by developing his moral and intellectual character. Mrs. Alma Reid, the white teacher who assures Johnny that "the world was rosy and he was happy" (3), lives "far away" (33) in a world quite removed from Johnny's "smelly ramshackle apartment" (6) and inspires him to move upward in life. Like Alger's rich gentlemen, Mrs. Reid is a custodian of morality who is interested in helping hard-working, intelligent boys like Johnny to climb the ladder of American success.

When Johnny discovers that he is in fact an orphan and that his apparently solid identity has no basis in fact, he quickly falls off the ladder of success and plunges into a world which is "dark, alien and unreal" (28). In such a universe Johnny is a marginal figure who "had no plans" (29). He becomes generally like the boys at school who carry knives, people with whom he had not previously identified and at whom he had "smiled superiorly" (3). Joining a juvenile gang because it provides him with at least the illusion of connection with others, Johnny becomes a grim inversion of the Alger hero, a gang leader who must now live on the violent fringes of society, eking out a bare subsistence by engaging in activity which is anathema to the Alger hero - stealing.

In these ways Rite of Passage displays most of the trademarks of Wright's best-known work, and some readers therefore might argue that it was not published for the good reason that it is simply a pale imitation of novels like Native Son and a novella like "The Man Who Lived Underground." Such an argument would, however, be false for two reasons: (1) Rite of Passage is anything but a "pale imitation" of Wright's previous work and is instead characterized by an unusual energy, power, and artistic skill which make it an important piece with its own merits, and (2) it possesses a very distinctive feature which is either missing or radically understated in Wright's other work, a sensitive and revealing treatment of important gender issues which are particularly relevant to contemporary readers. Wright, who has been strongly criticized in recent years for stereotyping female characters and generally ignoring or undervaluing the crucial roles which black women have played in African American culture, centers Rite of Passage in a serious meditation on how "feminine" values can play an enormously positive role in Johnny's development, while aggressively "masculine" values will lead to his destruction. Readers who feel justifiably uncomfortable with the ways in which gender is envisioned in novels like Lawd Today! and The Outsider will therefore find Rite of Passage an intriguing book which may cause them to re-evaluate Wright's treatment of important gender issues.

Unlike "The Man Who Lived Underground," which has no significant female presence, and The Long Dream, which portrays women as either extensions of male desire or annoying encumbrances blocking male fulfillment, Rite of Passage insists that women play a pivotal role in the lives of its male characters. Furthermore, it stresses that, if men grow up without the nurturing of women and if they do not honor the "feminine" side of their own personalities, then the most disastrous consequences will result. Johnny Gibbs, from an early age onward, is essentially confronted by two worlds with two opposite value systems: (1) a life-giving world presided over by women that is focused on two important institutions, the school and the home, and (2) a destructive, male-controlled world that assumes two equally deadly forms, the street and the gang.

At the beginning of the book Johnny's life is defined by the school and home, both of which are directed by women who nurture him and provide him with a sense of possibility. His teacher, a white woman whose "silver voice caressed his ears" (1), helps to bring out Johnny's best self by encouraging him to do well in school: "Her approval made him glow with pleasure" (3). Johnny's classroom, which in the book's opening scene is irradiated with "a flood of sun" (1), is portrayed as a heathy setting for mental growth and emotional warmth. Totally at ease in school, Johnny is "happy" (3), convinced that his life will take very different "directions" (5) from that of his classmate Billy, who has already joined a gang and is deeply impressed with the gun his brother has brought home from the army. Indeed, his teacher's name, Alma Reid, allegorically defines the school as a positive environment which nurtures the soul by teaching him to "read" himself and the world in a confident, secure way. It is not surprising therefore that Johnny is offended when he sees the peaceful and vital world of school violated when a student brings a knife to class, feeling strongly that "nobody ought to bring a thing like that to school" (3). Knives for Johnny at this point in his life are part of the dangerous world of the streets, from which he instinctively recoils.

When his day at school is over, Johnny moves to another nurturing environment which is also presided over by women, the apartment which his family rents in Harlem. Hungry now for physical food, Johnny anticipates a satisfying supper at home and is not disappointed when he enters the apartment and sees his mother busily preparing one of his favorite meals. Although the apartment building is "a smelly, ramshackle tenement" (6), his mother has made their home within this building a place of order, warmth, and growth. As he enters the apartment, Johnny is cheered not only by the prospect of enjoying a good supper, but also by his mother's warm smile as she directs him to wash before dinner.

The secure and healthy identity promoted by school and home, however, is quickly dissolved when Johnny learns that he is in fact a foster child and must move to a new "home" that evening. Finding out that the woman he thought was his mother is not his "blood" (14) mother and that Sis is not his "real" (13) sister, Johnny reacts as strongly to his situation as does Bigger Thomas after killing Mary Dalton or Fred Daniels when he has been falsely accused of murdering a woman; he moves in a flash from a familiar "old" life to a radically insecure and threatening "new" existence. Given the choice of an inauthentic life premised upon the fiction that his new foster parents will provide him with a loving family and a more troubling but genuine life that he can forge for himself on the streets, he quickly chooses the latter alternative, running away from home and taking a subway to 42nd Street. What the city provides him with is a terrifying Gothic world closely resembling Bigger Thomas's South Side of Chicago. Such an "unstable" and "unreal" (30) place powerfully reflects Johnny's fear and alienation. Replete with "yellow streetlamps glowing in the hazy dark" (36), "cold wind" (30), and tall buildings whose windows look like a "thousand vacant eyes" (40), the city becomes a complete reversal of school and home, a landscape of nightmare which threatens to reduce Johnny to complete paralysis.

Recoiling from such a "naked reality" (29), which strips him of everything he has previously valued and identified himself in terms of, Johnny reluctantly becomes part of a youth gang when his friend Billy sees him aimlessly wandering the streets and invites him to become part of "The Moochers." The exclusively male world of the gang initially promises him a new existence anchored in a fresh sense of self and community:

Yes, this was his passport to his new life, to the new and strange gang of boys upon whom he would have to depend for his food, for friendship. If, for any reason, they rejected him, he would be once again on the cold windswept streets. (57)

This "new life" promising a "new self" (57), ironically, is very similar to the false "new life" which Bigger Thomas thinks he achieves when he kills Mary Dalton. Just as Bigger's "new life" is in fact a destruction of his most humane self and quickly leads to his death, Johnny's new life as a gang member is simply a dead-end which will result in his destruction. The gang's predatory and senseless violence, which Billy wrongly claims will convert Johnny into a "man" (51), can only turn him into an animal or a corpse. Significantly, most of the gang members are described as "ghosts" (99), "rats" (111), "beasts" (79), or "robots" (107). And Johnny's gang name, appropriately enough, is "Jackal" (85), signifying his loss of humanity and his becoming part of a grimly Darwinian world which will lead, sooner than he thinks, to his downfall. The gang, which takes a special delight in jumping "a university teacher" (103) and chides Johnny when his educated diction makes him "sound like a schoolteacher" (113), is a complete reversal of the world of school. Instead of stimulating his growth and offering him an open future, it forecloses his prospects and moves him toward either an early death or imprisonment.

Wright's distaste for this grotesquely masculine world based upon violence, competition, and death is vividly revealed in his description of two important scenes of graphic violence late in the novel: Johnny's savage fight with the gang's leader, Baldy, and the gang's mugging of a white man in Central Park. (These two scenes are so strongly written that they may constitute the main reason that Wright had difficulty publishing the book in the mid-1940s.) It is important to remember that Wright stresses that only a part of Johnny's divided self participates in these two episodes. While his outer nature is forced by circumstances to engage in violence, his inner nature draws back from the action and longs for more humane options. His fight with Baldy is "forced upon him" (72), and although part of him becomes a fierce beast which goes "wild" (79) during the fight, another part of him is repulsed by the scene. In the same way, Johnny does not really want to participate in the Central Park mugging but goes along with the gang because he is fearful of their response to his objecting to their actions. As he walks to the park with them, he secretly wishes "to flee to the shelter of one of those dark, looming houses and knock on the door and be admitted into the warmth of a home where people lived with smiles and trust and faith" (102). Like most of Wright's protagonists and heroes, Johnny has two conflicting selves, a humane self seeking love and community and an artificially imposed social self forced into acts of suicidal violence.

It is important to realize that Wright consistently associates Johnny's best self with feminine values and influence, while he links his worst self with masculine values and influence. Irresponsible flight, for example, is connected with Johnny's biological father, who quickly abandons his mother after she becomes pregnant, thus forcing her to give up Johnny to a foster home. And compulsive violence is always associated with male figures like Billy's brother, who endangers his family by bringing home his army gun, and Baldy, who erupts in terrible violence whenever his ego is threatened. Johnny's humane self, however, is activated whenever he thinks of the women who have touched his life in positive ways. Soon after he runs away from home after being told that "City" (18) authorities have placed him in another foster home, he has the strong desire to talk with someone, and immediately thinks of his teacher, Mrs. Reid. When he imagines his biological mother, whom he discovers has gone insane and become institutionalized, his moral nature is activated and he feels "enormously guilty" (51). Although this guilt is irrational, it does help to counterbalance the destructive rage boiling in him when he finds out about his father's abandonment and society's arbitrarily moving him to another foster home.

In the novel's final scenes, Johnny's humane self is vividly dramatized by his desire for female presence and influence. As he trudges the "empty silent streets" (102) with the gang as they make their way to Central Park to randomly beat up and rob white people, Johnny's inner self "yearned to sink to his knees to some kind of old black woman and sob: Help me.... I can't go through with this!" (102) After he has participated in the mugging, he hears the voice of a "Negro woman" (103) screaming her disapproval of the gang's behavior by shouting in denunciation "'You Boys! You Boys!'" (107). Although it is highly unlikely that this woman is objectively real, since only Johnny hears her repeated calls and nobody actually sees her, she is crucially important in the story because she is the voice within Johnny, a moral voice like the voices of Mrs. Reid and his foster mother which direct him away from crime and violence and encourage him to respond to the world in productive, humane terms.

The active presence of this "feminine" voice within Johnny, therefore, endows Rite of Passage with a very measured and qualified hope. As the gang "huddle[s] together, panting" (107) like pack animals trapped in a cycle of inward compulsion and outward conditioning, Johnny is "alone" (117) in a positive sense because the macho values which control the gang have not yet swallowed up his entire personality. He surely has not become Baldy, who is finally described as a psychopath, and he has not yet fully become Jackal, a jungle animal. He is repulsed by the gang's nihilistic behavior and, more importantly, wants to share his humane, "feminine" self with them:

Again Johnny wondered if he ought to tell them about the woman; he turned his head and looked over the park, but no one was in sight. Had he imagined that he had seen and heard the woman? No, he had seen her, had heard her. He found himself identifying with the woman, pictured her running and looking for them, and he wanted her to find them. (108)

Identifying more strongly with the woman and what she represents than the gang and what it represents, Johnny is only superficially taken in by a macho ethic and still has a chance of remaining human in an increasingly brutal world. Moreover, he has a strong desire to tell the gang about the woman and wishes that she may "find" them; that is, redeem them, by rejuvenating the feminine side of their personalities.

One might say that Johnny finally becomes more than a bit like Wright himself, who dedicated his masterwork Native Son to his mother because she activated within him an artist's voice as she took him on her knee when he was a child and taught him "to revere the fanciful and the imaginative." By nurturing a humane and creative voice within Wright that enabled him to tell his "story" and share it with others, Wright's mother provided him with resources which enabled him to find imaginative alternatives to the social environment which crushes so many of his characters.

Wright's problems with women have been well documented by his biographers, and his difficulties in portraying feminine experience in some of his works have been stressed by many recent critics. But a significant part of Wright's life and art has been unfortunately obscured by these observations, however valid they might sometimes be. Perhaps one of the most valuable aspects of the literary recovery and publication of Rite of Passage is that its very explicit treatment of the high premium which Wright placed on feminine values might cause us to take a fresh look at how women figure generally in Wright's work, especially in his masterpiece Native Son. (We should remember, for example, that Bigger's inhumanity is most vividly revealed when he "blots out" not only two women but the feminine side of himself and that his salvaging of a human identity begins when he acknowledges guilt over these actions and is able to touch his mother and sister in love.)

Although Johnny Gibbs's humanity is not apparent to anyone on the scene in Central Park when he participates in a gang mugging, the reader is well aware that he is a tragically divided person rather than a vicious animal because the reader realizes that Johnny's mind is "still full of the running and invisible woman he had seen and heard" (109). Because he "sees" this woman and because her humane voice arises from the deepest levels of his own consciousness, he has not yet been consumed by the macho values which could turn him into a robot, beast, or ghost. Perhaps it is time now for Wright's readers to pursue the "invisible woman" in Wright's best work and thus become more aware of a critically important, but often neglected, dimension of his vision.

Reviewed by Robert James Butler Canisius College