The Shaman's Apprentice: Ecstasy and Economy in Wilson's Joe Turner.

In his book August Wilson and the African American Odyssey, Kim Pereira briefly engages the theories of the renowned anthropologist Mircea Eliade in order to understand the events and characters of Wilson's play Joe Turner's Come and Gone (82-83). Recognizing that the drama includes a search for self-actualization by a group of African Americans migrating north in the second decade of the twentieth century, Pereira asserts that it is only through the acceptance of their dual cultural heritage that the characters are able to recover from the degradations of their past and experience renewal (56). The allusion to shamanic rituals, for Pereira, signifies this cultural reconstitution. Loomis reconnects with his African self and thus "encapsulates the Black experience" (81). Pereira is certainly accurate in his recognition of the characters' quest for self-affirmation, as well as the importance of reconnecting with their non-Western cultural heritage, but he does not acknowledge the centrality of shamanism to the structure of the drama. The events of Joe Turner dramatize the election and education of a shaman, as the power to heal and to manipulate the spirit world is passed from one generation to the next.

The action of Wilson's play takes place in a Pittsburgh boarding house in 1911. The setting is appropriate to the subject matter since most of the characters are displaced people, whether uprooted by the desire to find economic opportunities in the industrial North or compelled to flee "the eyes of watchful tyranny" in the South. However, their search is not motivated entirely by practical considerations--sustenance and safety; they are also driven by the desire for spiritual renewal. The names of many of the characters reveal their longings for edification.

Bynum is a "conjure man" whose craft is devoted to the reunion of lost and separated persons whom he "binds" physically and spiritually. Having attained spiritual illumination, he is capable of facilitating the same in others. Yet the racial ideology of the play suggests that, in spite of his knowledge of the African folk and spiritual customs, he is nevertheless torn between two worlds. Bynum does not bind people exclusively; he also unifies cultures. His visionary sequence reveals the conjunction of African and Christian motifs (Pereira 71). His quest for the "shiny man" is the search for an individual whose own spiritual awakening exceeds his own, the uncompromising African Man.

This paradigm of cultural resurgence is, of course, Loomis, who recognizes Bynum's negotiation with the ideology that enthralls and exploits people of African descent and who lashes out at the conjure man's effort to bind him as he was bound to Joe Turner's chain gang for seven years: "...Harold Loomis ain't for no binding" (91). Loomis lost his religion when Turner captured him, depriving him of his family and his freedom. Loomis now recognizes the collusion between religion and the racist state and cannot bring himself to celebrate the white man's God, who has demanded such sacrifices from him. Thus he wanders, physically and spiritually, in search of his wife and his beginning. The "illumination" that is implicit in Loomis's name is not the divine madness of the Christian saints; it is derived from a more ancient source--the ecstasy of the shaman.

Loomis's refusal to remain in the company of his newly recovered wife, Martha Pentecost, reveals his aversion to Christianity and particularly to Western ecstatic traditions. The name Pentecost, of course, suggests the visitation of the Holy Ghost upon the disciples of Christ (Acts 2:1). Martha has maintained her faith in spite of the forced dissolution of her family. Loomis has sought her out only to deposit their child in her care and to make contact once again with the period of contentment and confidence that characterized their lives together. However, Loomis's journey into the past stretches beyond the gratifications of those happier times. He seeks a spiritual healing that can only be achieved by an older ecstatic tradition. Martha recognizes that he is lost to Christianity and erroneously associates his new allegiances with evil: "You done gone over to the devil" (91).

Bynum and Loomis are foiled by those characters who have been more fully assimilated into white culture. The most stark contrast is with Seth, the boarding-house owner, who is determined to achieve material success and who has very little patience for those African Americans migrating north, looking for the same prosperity that Seth desires:

These niggers coming up here with that old backward country style of living. It's hard enough now without all that ignorant kind of acting. Ever since slavery got over with there ain't been nothing but foolish-acting niggers. (6)

Seth is very demanding of his boarders, insisting on advanced payment in full, and is preoccupied with maintaining a respectable house. His callousness is antithetical to Bynum's selflessness. While Bynum counsels and guides Loomis through his visionary trance, demonstrating charity and grace, Seth is only concerned with ejecting Loomis from the premises for creating a disturbance. He haggles with all of the characters over their boarding fees and threatens to throw most of them out at one time or another.

The most revealing aspect of Seth's character is his scorn for Bynum's religious practices. The play opens with Seth's derisive account of Bynum's magical rituals, which he refers to as "all that old mumbo jumbo nonsense." The expression reveals Seth's refusal to acknowledge any affinity with his African past. He is a capitulationist who wants to blend into the white man's world. His ongoing negotiation with Rutherford Selig over the manufacture and sale of dustpans manifests his longing for the white man's success and for opportunities to exploit African Americans' labor potential. He fantasizes about hiring Jeremy to toil in his new dustpan business. However, he does not seem to realize the extent to which he is a victim of the white economy with which he longs to merge: The bank will not give him a loan to start a new business unless he offers his house as collateral, a request which within the context of the drama is unreasonable. The representation of white material success and independence that Seth lon gs to imitate is Rutherford Selig, the "people finder."

Selig, the only Caucasian character, possesses a name that, in German, means 'blessed' or 'ecstatic.' In combination with the verb werden, selig signifies the attainment of salvation--'to become saved.' It is something of a curiosity that the playwright would include the single white character in his visionary motif, particularly since Rutherford Selig is identified with those forces that have brought the African American characters to their current state of upheaval and degradation. Although Selig offers his services in the search for lost people, he is, by his own admission, associated with those who made it their business to separate Black families. Bertha remarks cynically that Selig "ain't never found nobody he ain't took away" (42). The association of his name with 'blessed' may suggest the opportunities that are inherent exclusively to whites in a racist culture. Selig obviates white cultural domination; his blessing is financial and entrepreneurial success, a condition that most of the characters wish to share, particularly Seth.

The play itself dramatizes the effort to introduce African Americans into the American industrial economy of the twentieth century, and Selig's role in the drama suggests that the most enduring link between the characters is the acquisition of material goods. The only Caucasian admits that his progenitors have always made their living pursuing African Americans: His great grandfather transported slaves from Africa; his father captured runaway slaves for their owners; and Selig himself locates displaced people for a fee. These practices reduce African Americans to commodities and are precursors to the assumption of Blacks into industry-the same process that characterizes the setting, both spatial arid temporal, of the play. Selig's salvation is his own exclusion from racial oppression and his financial independence. Thus, his name is ironic. He attains his ecstasy through consumer capitalism, through the "selling" of material products. For him, African Americans are objects for exploitation and exchange in the new economy, as in the old. His efforts are thus another manifestation of Joe Turner's chain gang. He finds African Americans and binds them to the economic system, demanding payment for his services and products which, in turn, necessitates subsistence labor.

The mercantile obsessions of Seth and Selig, as well as the sensual preoccupations of Jeremy, Mattie, and Molly, are antithetical to the spiritual yearnings of the shamanic characters. Both Bynum and Loomis do no work within the play, and this refusal to labor is a truly revolutionary practice within a modern economy. While Bynum's motivations are not stated, Loomis specifically rejects the ideology that insists he labor on behalf of white men and their ideology:

Great big old white man... your Mr. Jesus Christ. Standing there with a whip in one hand and tote board in another, and them niggers swimming in a sea of cotton.

And he counting what's the matter, you ain't picked but two hundred pounds of cotton today. (92)

Bynum's refusal to participate in the economy is a refusal to accept one of the most fundamental social structures of the modem state. His rejection of familial ties and obligations is yet another means of rejecting the same order. The obligation to the family necessitates labor in order to provide for the material needs of dependents. The shaman's path is solitary and antimaterialistic.

Eliade characterizes the shaman as a "specialist in the human soul" (8), the individual who is responsible for the spiritual and physical health of the tribe and who, in a visionary trance, journeys into spiritual realms to seek out and remove the sources of illness (5). Both Bynum and Loomis possess qualities associated with this shamanic legacy. However, Bynum's power is that of a fully realized medicine man, while Loomis is experiencing the agonizing transformations that will lead to his own shamanic vocation.

The initiation of a shaman can come about either through "hereditary transmission" or "spontaneous vocation" (Eliade 13). He does not choose his work, but is chosen by the spirits to pursue a life as a healer. The medicine men in Joe Turner seem to be the unwitting proselytes of the spirits.

Bynum tells of his own election, which occurs on the road near Johnstown where he encounters a hungry man to whom he offers food and who, subsequently, promises to teach him the "meaning of life." The traveler rubs blood on Bynum's hands and encourages him to cleanse himself by smearing it on his face. Following this ritual, Bynum's companion begins to glow, and all of the objects in the vicinity grow to twice their normal size: "sparrows big as eagles!" Next Bynum encounters the distorted image of his dead father, who tells him that there are many "shiny men," and if Bynum ever sees another, his work will be complete; he can "die a happy man." Finally, the father urges Bynum to learn a curative song--the binding song (8-10).

The above narrative constitutes a clever mixture of pagan and Christian imagery. Bynum's shamanic powers are a negotiation between the religious heritage of Western culture and the practices of his African and Carribean ancestors. Bynum's experience is reminiscent of St. Paul's ecstasy on the road to Damascus, where he would encounter the crucified Christ and be converted to the new religion. The location itself near Johnstown may be a very subtle allusion to the Revelation of St. John (another scriptural ecstasy) as well as a reference to John the Baptist, who is cited specifically in the characterization of the "shiny man" as the "One Who Goes Before and Shows the Way" (10). The shiny man's blood that cleanses Bynum is, of course, an allusion to the redemptive qualities of Christ's blood, and the shiny man's glow may be an allusion to the transfiguration of Christ, still another ecstatic moment in the gospels.

However, the imagery of Bynum's ecstasy has a dual signification, one that yokes together historically antithetical religious traditions. Many of the same attributes associated with Christianity are decidedly shamanic. The "shiny man" suggests the shamanic gods and spirits who are also associated with light. Fire is believed to be the easiest way to transform body into spirit (Townsend 440). Moreover, blood is integral to many ancient rituals, since it was believed to open the portal between worlds and nourish the spirits (Freidel, Schele, and Parker 201-02). and it is only after Bynum rubs himself in his companion's blood that his environment changes: His father's spirit appears; objects become larger than life; and his traveling companion begins to glow. The subsequent encounter with his father's spirit suggests the "hereditary transmission" of the shaman's vocation. Many shamanic (most notably Native American) ritual practices involve ancestor worship; the medicine man encountering the spirits of dead love d ones who inaugurate and direct his spiritual vocation (Schele and Freidel 202-03). It is his father's ghost who urges Bynum to find his song. Bynum reveals that his dead father was a "conjure man" whose song had the capacity to heal, a vocation consistent with the shaman's principal objective--to alleviate spiritual and physical suffering through interaction with the spiritual world (Eliade 28). In his effort to discover his own song, Bynum intentionally selects one that differs from his father's, but one that, nevertheless, possesses a philanthropic objective. He will bind those who have been separated, and he is likely to be very busy, since every character in the play is searching for a lost lover or family member.

In Bynum's ecstasy, the father reminds his son that if he (Bynum) ever sees another shiny man, he will know that his work has been successful. There is an element of finality to the father's promise, suggesting that Bynum's life and work will be finished (10). Thus the appearance of a "shiny man" at the conclusion of Joe Turner implies the consumation of Bynum's work and the passing on of has powers to the next generation, the obvious recipient being Loomis, who has been chosen to carry on the profession. since shamanism is an oral tradition, it is necessary for the practitioner to initiate and train the next generation--those subsequent medicine men becoming the new repositories of the cultural wisdom (Ong 24). However, just as Bynum altered his father's craft, Loomis will also find a unique song, the "song of self-sufficiency...free from any encumbrances other than the workings of his own heart and the bonds of his flesh" (93-94). While Bynum's labors sought to reunite the fragmented and alienated African A merican population at both the individual and the cultural levels, Loomis's edification signifies the severing of the African from the American. His awakening is a refusal of the most basic tenets of the Western religious tradition. Unlike the other residents of the boarding house, Loomis no longer needs companionship to experience contentment, and he no longer needs the white man's religion to define his place within a culture. The binding of cultures that was a portion of Bynum's song is transcended by Loomis, who emerges as the new African subject. His "shinning represents a new valuation--"a new money" (94). As indicated above, economics, the exchange of consumer goods and services for cash, is what unites all members of the modern state, but Loomis is a new currency, one that will not and cannot circulate within the white American economy. He is the resurrected African man, emerging from the degradation of abduction and bondage. Indeed, the unique goals of the play's three shamans signify the evolution o f African Americans following emancipation: a movement from healing, to binding and reunion, and finally to cultural and spiritual self-sufficiency.

Loomis's edification as a shaman is a lengthy process, only the most crucial and auspicious moments of which are depicted in Wilson's play. The medicine man's craft frequently emerges from his efforts to heal his own suffering, and "the initiation of the candidate is equivalent to a cure." Indeed, his infirmity manifests his election (Eliade 27). Loomis is spiritually sick, wandering in search of his wife, who disappeared while he was in bondage to Joe Turner. He does not know how to renew his life in the wake of debilitating disillusionment and suffering, and his experiences with Bynum are pivotal. By reuniting Loomis's daughter Zonia with her mother, Bynum frees Loomis to pursue spiritual renewal: "...he is free to soar above the environs that weighed and pushed his spirit into terrifying contractions" (94). It is after this apotheosis that Loomis is finally able to say goodbye to his wife and to the memory of their lost happiness.

The playwright uses an image of flying to reveal Loomis's liberation from his mundane obligations. Loomis soars "above" his "environs." Soul flight is, of course, central to the shamanic experience. In the midst of his ecstasy, the holy man often possesses the spirit of a bird and describes his visionary flight above the earth (Harner 158).

The Dyak shaman, who escorts the souls of the deceased to the other world, also takes the form of a bird. We have seen that the Vedic sacrificer, when he reaches the top of the ladder, spreads his arms as a bird does its wings and cries: "We have come to heaven" .... The same rite is found in Melkula: at the culminating point of the sacrifice the sacrificer spreads his arms to imitate the falcon and sings a chant in honor of the stars. (Eliade 478)

The image of Loomis's soul flight is an unmistakable sign of his spiritual rejuvenation as well as his election to the shaman's vocation. Only now does he begin to shine. Eliade's association of the flight with sacrifice is also pivotal to understanding Loomis's apotheosis.

At the moment of his consecration, Loomis proclaims, "I'm standing! I'm standing! My legs stood up! I'm standing now!" (93). His elation over this simple task is the culmination of an image motif that began with Loomis's vision of the "bones people" at the end of Act I. The vision of skeletal people drifting in ships, drowning in the ocean, and landing on the shore has proven a fruitful metaphor, signifying not only the slave trade and the displacement of African abductees to America, but also the disorientation experienced by the former slaves upon their emancipation and, by extension, the confusion and bewilderment experienced by Loomis following his release from seven years on a chain gang. However, Loomis's ecstasy is also related to the shaman's initiation. The dismemberment and evisceration of the neophyte body is a commonplace thematic in various accounts of the medicine man's genesis (Eliade 34). At his investiture, the novitiate describes being reduced to a skeleton by spirits who devour and then res tore his flesh (Townsend 446). Among the Siberian Yakut shamans, the initiate dreams of being ripped apart by a giant "hook": "The bones are cleaned, the flesh scraped, the body fluids thrown away, and the eyes torn out of their sockets" (Eliade 36). In the genesis of the Tungus shaman, the novitiate is dismembered and consumed by spirits. Finally, they "throw his head into a cauldron where it is melted with certain metal pieces that will later form part of his ritual costume (43). The Malekula ritual is recounted in more detail:

... the Bwili made himself a bamboo knife and[,] cutting off one of the young man's arms, placed it on two of the leaves. And he laughed at his nephew and the youth laughed back. Then he cut off the other arm and placed it on the leaves beside the first. And he came back and they both laughed again. Then he cut off his leg from the thigh and laid it alongside the arms. And he came and laughed and the youth laughed too. Then he cut off the other leg and laid it beside the first....

Lastly he cut off the head, held it out before him. And he laughed and the head laughed, too.

Then he put the head back in its place and took the arms and legs that he had taken off and put them all back in their places. (Layard 65-66)

Loomis's vision of the "bones people" is instigated by the invocation to the Holy Ghost in the midst of the African Juba dance. Denouncing the characters' continued reverence for Christianity, Loomis "is thrown back and collapses, terror-stricken by his vision" (53). He sees himself reduced to bones and is particularly troubled by his inability to stand up and walk along the road. Thus the triumphant proclamation that he is standing at the conclusion of the drama suggests his restoration and his investiture as a shaman. He describes himself surrounded by "enemies picking" his "flesh." Yet despite his symbolic evisceration, Loomis is restored and is a "new" and better person. Asking incredulously if "blood make you clean," he slashes himself, rubs his blood on his face, and realizes that he is finally walking upright (93). Loomis's enlightenment involves a rejection of Christian salvation: He realizes that he can save himself, and this ability allows him to heal others as well.

Loomis's edification is managed and manipulated by Bynum, who questions the neophyte in the midst of his initial ecstasy and guides Loomis through a detailed account of the bones people. The play suggests that Bynum may have had a similar experience when he saw the shiny man:

Then he carried me further into this big place until we come to this ocean. Then he showed me something I ain't got words to tell you. But if you stand to witness it, you done seen something there. (10)

The lack of details in Bynum's account leaves the interpretation of the passage open, but Bynum's prior knowledge of the content of Loomis's vision argues strongly that the events for which Bynum has no words include skeletons on the sea shore. Loomis recognizes Bynum as a kindred spirit: "You one of them bones people" (73). And just as his father introduced Bynum to the ocean of bodies, Bynum guides his own apprentice through this initiatory vision.

The conditions that instigate Loomis's ecstatic trance in the midst of the Juba dance are reminiscent of the shaman's possession that is an initial sign of election by the spirits. "Drumming, dancing, [and] chanting" are traditional means of invoking a mystical trance (Needham 505-14). When Loomis hears the Juba chanting, he dances, speaking in tongues. Just as the shamans of the Sudan become possessed by spirits, begin to tremble, and lapse into unconsciousness as a prelude to their visionary trance (Eliade 55), Loomis, at the conclusion of his dance, falls to the floor and begins to prophesy.

Bynum's preoccupation with helping others find their songs may also have its origin in the medicine man's ritual, where the song is frequently equivalent to the magic that the shaman practices (Eliade 98). One account of the role that song plays in the shamanic initiation is derived from the indigenous people of the Carribean: "... the first piai [shaman] was a man who, hearing a song rise from the stream, dived boldly in and did not come out again until he had memorized the song of the spirit women and received the implement of his profession from them" (qtd. in Eliade 97). "Each shaman," writes Eliade, "has his particular song that he intones to invoke spirits" (96).

It is not difficult to perceive the application of these ideas to Wilson's Joe Turner. Bynum's efforts to help the other boarders, particularly Loomis, find their songs is a definitively shamanic process. The conjure man has received his own song from the spirit of his father, a song that has a magical quality--the capacity to bind people together. His father's healing song was magical in a more traditional sense, and the song that Loomis learns at the conclusion of the play will teach others self-sufficiency. Bynum stipulates that he is not teaching new tunes, but helping others to rediscover the music that they have forgotten. In each case, he suggests that it is the domination of white European culture that has caused the African American characters to forget their songs. Thus the discovery of this music is a recovery of the past, the ante/anti-bondage consciousness. Loomis's reclamation and rehabilitation of his song is a call to evangelize once again, not advocating the Holy Spirit, but promoting self-su fficiency and a rediscovery of African cultural traditions. Loomis's current isolation was not always characteristic of him. He had once been a deacon in his church, and on the day he was captured by Joe Turner, he had stopped to preach to a group of men. Bynum tells Loomis that Joe Turner stole his song. Its recovery implies a renewal of his desire to guide and heal others.

A customary attribute of many shamanic rituals is the blood sacrifice of animals--pigs, goats, cows, etc. The blood served to nourish the gods or to transfer affliction and offense onto the sacrificial subject. Although the practice was uncommon, even human sacrifice might be conducted in a period of social crisis (Blacker 120-21). Initially, the blood imagery in Wilson's Joe Turner has a decidedly Christian quality. While both of the play's shamans experience a blood baptism as an introduction to their vocation, Bynum's clearly alludes to Christ's blood. The blood-covered hands of the "shiny man" suggest the stigmata, and he invites the neophyte to cleanse himself with that blood (9). The action results in an initiatory vision that launches his shamanic profession. In contrast, Loomis's blood ritual is a clear refusal of Christ as the sacrificial subject. While his wife prays for his soul, Loomis declaims against Christianity's false pledge to alleviate the suffering of African Americans. He identifies Chris t as an instrument of domination, encouraging African Americans to abide their maltreatment patiently and offering little more than abstract promises of happiness after death. Dismissing the idea that Christ can atone for his sins, Loomis explains that he has done enough bleeding to warrant salvation on his own terms, and it is at this moment that the play declares Loomis's "self-sufficiency," his liberation from Western cultural and theological traditions. Loomis's transfiguration into the African medicine man is complete; he has gone beyond the negotiated shamanism of Bynum, who still allows Western culture to define his spirituality. Just as Bynum's "shiny man" "Goes Before and Shows the Way" (10), Bynum himself was merely a precursor to and facilitator of the newly enlightened African subject, and Loomis will light the way to the spiritual renewal of still others.

The passage of the shaman's vocation encompasses four generations in the play, revealing the means whereby African culture has been transmitted despite the cultural imperialism of white America. The embassy moves from Bynum's father, to Bynum, to Loomis, and, by implication, to the neighbor boy Reuben, who also has a vision. He reveals his experience to Loomis's daughter Zonia. Reuben sees the spirit of Seth's dead mother near the pigeon coops; she is wearing a white dress and radiating light. She beats him with her cane and encourages him to release the caged birds. The spirit's visitation suggests spontaneous election: The beating implies the shaman's suffering and the pleasurable pain of the traditional ecstasy, and the charge that Reuben release the pigeons implies the liberation thematic that is closely related to the shamanic task within the drama. It looks forward to Loomis's liberation and subsequent flight following his final consecration.

The multiplying holy men within the text are set off in sharp contrast to the more mundane characters, who are preoccupied with material wealth, companionship, and sex. These individuals, who are more easily assimilated into white culture, are the very same subjects who must be enlightened and converted to an African consciousness by the play's wise men. Jay Plum describes the "black rite of passage" that is so common in African American literature:

The initiand first rejects the socially fixed position of African Americans as a cultural "other" and withdraws from white society. He or she then moves through a timeless and statusless liminality in which he or she receives instruction, often in the form of ancestral wisdom. Finally, the initiand achieves a sense of self-sufficiency and is reincorporated into society. (564)

The neophyte recognizes that there is no place for him in white culture, so his reintroduction to society involves an embracing of his distinct differences as a man of African descent (565). It is easy to perceive the application of the above paradigm to the character Loomis in Wilson's play. However, the character's reawakening after his encounter with "cultural wisdom" is not the self-discovery of the average African American subject, but the creation of a new source of cultural wisdom, a new African holy man.

Wilson's play Joe Turner participates in the same process that it depicts. The audience experiences the transformation vicariously through the agonies and ecstasies of Harold Loomis. Wilson recognizes the antithetical influences that define African Americans--the impulse to assimilate into white culture and the impetus to extricate and maintain a distinct black culture. In his interview with Sandra Shannon, Wilson expresses his confidence in the viability of a distinctly African American spirituality and culture (546). In Joe Turner, even those characters most fully assimilated into white culture are familiar with and participate in the Juba dance and are sufficiently conversant with non-Western religious traditions to appreciate and fear Bynum's conjuring. However, the play stages an apotheosis which, by example, urges the audience to move toward an uncompromised African spirituality and consciousness.

Thus the playwright himself becomes the shaman, manipulating the ghosts of our imaginations, healing the wounds created by four hundred years of racial oppression and cultural imperialism, and urging the audience to stand up and get back on the road.

James R. Keller directs the Honors College at Mississippi University for Women. He has recently published a book entitled Anne Rice and Sexual Politics and is the author of articles on Renaissance literature, African American literature, and film and cultural studies.

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