Puritan Jeremiad In James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time

James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time functions as a Puritan jeremiad because it strongly laments the lack of social justice that permeates society. For example, when he writes to his nephew he says, “Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear” (Baldwin 8). While attempting to provide comfort and to lift the spirits of his nephew, he also reveals the state in which the society is in. In order to justify racism and discrimination, white people must make themselves (and black people) believe that the black people are inhuman, but in doing so they only subject themselves to hatred and succumb themselves to becoming inhuman bigots themselves.

When Baldwin ends his book with a warning and prediction to come if the warning is not paid mind. He believes that if whites and blacks work together, “we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world” (105). However, Baldwin warns that if a change is not made towards social justice and unity, then we will see the end of the world. As the bible says, God once lost all of his faith in humanity and decided to wipe out the world by flood – with the exception of a good man named Noah and his family. Baldwin reminds his readers: “God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!” In giving this warning, he implies that God would lose faith in humanity if white people and black people do not both come together in social harmony – suggesting that both whites and blacks exist at an equal level of human in the eyes of God. Humanity will suffer a death at their own hands if they do not become more enlightened and educated – in other words, the world will literally go up in