At the station house

Introduction

Go Tell It on the Mountain is a 1953 semi-autobiographical novel by James Baldwin. The novel examines the role of the Christian Church in the lives of African-Americans, both as a source of repression and moral hypocrisy and as a source of inspiration and community. It also, more subtly, examines racism in the United States.
In this text called in the station house, Richard is an African-American living in Harlem. He was waiting for a train and saw two coloured men who were pursued by the police. The policemen arrested the two coloured and Richard. The victim recognized the three men as being the robbers. Richard tries to argue but it doesn’t work.

This text falls into three parts
Form l.1 to l.10 = we learn that he is in jail and that he has been tortured.
From l.11 to l.29 = how he was captured
From l.30 to the end = at the police station

To analyse this extract we will follow three main ideas. First of all, we will analyse Richards ‘descent into hell. Then we will describe the Afro-Americans living conditions. Finally, we will show that this text is a criticism of the American judicial system.

I) Richards’ descent into hell

a) The calm before the storm

We can notice that this tragic story starts with an ordinary situation. The narrator starts describing a very quiet situation. He wants the reader to feel in a peaceful atmosphere.
As quoted (l.13) “It was late, and trains were slow, he was all alone on the platform, only half awake, thinking, he said, of her.” Then this atmosphere is going to be disturbed by a sound. The narrator introduces progressively the two others characters to make the reader feel on Richards’ place.
(l.16) “he heard a sound of running, and, looking up, he saw tow coloured boys running down the steps.”
The story starts becoming weird when the narrator describes the state of the two men. We deduce that there is a problem. (l.18)“their clothes were torn, and they were