Binaries and Identities in Amiri Baraka's Dutchman

In Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman, the binary between black and white people embeds itself into the characters on the subway. Lula, who incorporates her image with control and deception through her white skin, represents one significant driving force. Clay, who faces manipulation from the oppressive white presence of Lula and the others on the train, has to step up and become an opposing force. Throughout these characters transformations from individuals to powers, they express a combination of double consciousness and self-consciousness to reveal their true identities.

The majority of the play focuses on the double-consciousness aspect using actions like looking, stereotyping, and seducing. For example, the initial interaction between Lula and Clay involves looking at each other through the subway window. While the word looking suggests an innocent, even friendly demeanor, Lula interjects her own interpretation to Clay, saying “But only after I’d turned around and saw you staring through that window down in the vicinity of my legs and ass” (Baraka 7; italics mine). Lula’s use of the word staring adds a dimension of judgment to the action, turning what was a harmless gesture into a more intense and seductive exploit. Another perspective on this scene comes from Nita Kumar’s essay, “The Logic of Retribution: Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman”, in which he interprets Lula’s beginning dialogue as “[it] begins to hint, very obtrusively, at the hiatus between “being” and “looking” and later, “’Looking,’ both in its active sense of ‘seeing’ and ‘perceiving’ and in its passive sense of ‘appearing’ forms a central preoccupation of this play” (Kumar 5). Using his interpretation, another binary between the real individual and the perceived mask arises, whi...

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...yclic pattern has been established with the presence of the type being reinforced by the second young black man. Lula, who loses her stature and must regain not only composure but her whole sense of identity, sets up herself to replay the stereotyping over again. Her identity is false, ever-changing, and never accountable, whereas Clay loses his life over embracement of his identity. By exploiting Clay through double-consciousness and using the others on the train as props, self-consciousness must take over to form remainders of identities that have long been forgotten to Lula. Through preservation of culture and the realization of individuality, Clay maintains his identity throughout death.

Works Cited

Baraka, Amiri. Dutchman. New York: Harper Perennial, 1964.

Kumar, Nita N. "The Logic of Retribution: Amiri Baraka's Dutchman." African American Review (2003): 9.