Of James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography Of An Ex-Colored Man

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man Essay

Narrative attitude has a large impact on the way a novel reads. It is what makes the reader feel for the narrator, connect to the story, and experience the words on the page in a moving and profound way. However, in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, the narrator appears to not be emotional in order to focus the reader’s attention on the real purpose of the novel.

This purpose, quite simply, is that the novel is a social commentary instead of an emotional experience. The author doesn’t need to include lengthy and heartfelt descriptions of the narrator’s inner thoughts in order for the reader to understand the impact of race in the early 1900’s. The author chose to create a narrator who sounds as though he is making a factual account of his life as opposed to how the individual events affected him. In many novels, the narrator’s emotions are pivotal to the way the story is interpreted and offers insight on characters and actions, but in a book where characters aren’t even addressed by name and therefore importance isn’t placed heavily upon them, this doesn’t offer much clarity. This book

introduces actions and events as a set-up to how they fit within the social commentary. In order to conserve precious time and ink, Johnson could have skimmed over the flowery and irrational details of a common novel and moved directly to situations that contribute to the discussion of race. The narrator is merely witness to these events, and often describes them as an outsider would.
However, these events occurred many years in the past from the time he is narrating. The novel is a reflection on his life, and he is narrating as an older man, with children and a large variety of experiences under his belt. Johnson could be paralleling reality, where the more time has passed between an event and the present, the vaguer the memory and duller the feeling associated with that memory is. A person towards the latter half of their life will not be able to recall an event with perfect clarity and the narrator shouldn’t be expected to do this, either. This contributes to the realistic feeling of the book.
Another realistic addition to the novel is that the narrator would have been reserved and protective of his life story. He had to make the significant decision to pass for white and not to let his children know of their black heritage. If the book was to be taken as a genuine autobiography, as the author, by keeping his work anonymous, originally intended, then the audience needed to be convinced that the narrator would be tentative of announcing his decision to the world. He wouldn’t offer up many details. He would keep his descriptions brief and attempt to keep a level-head so his feelings wouldn’t domineer the story as opposed to the racial issue at hand. It is not that he has a lack of emotions, for clearly he has been through emotional and traumatic situations, but that he chooses to control them. By maintaining a reserved attitude and not displaying vulnerability through his feelings, the narrator could be expressing the reservations expected of someone unmasking their true identity.
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man may take a different approach to narrative attitude than the average novel might, but it is this difference that makes the story so effective.

Forthright emotions are not necessary in this piece for the reader to connect, understand, or empathize with the plot. Johnson created a character who clearly has emotions, but chooses to safeguard them for a realistic feeling and the ability to concentrate on the more important purpose of the novel: to expose the difficulties a man with dual identity may face in a time period determined on separating and segregating who he is. Detached and emotionless, in this well-crafted and well-thought-out scenario, expresses more emotion and creates a more realistic novel than a complex examination of his inner feelings may have

provided.