Outward Evil Inward Battle: Human Memory in Literature

Chapter 3. Memory, the Blues, and African American Slave Narratives

55 Chapter 3 Memory, the Blues, and African American Slave Narratives Loretta S. Burns Ralph Ellison famously described the blues as “an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal existence alive in one’s aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it. . . . As a form, the blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically” (129). The influence of the blues on other African American art forms, including written literature, is widely acknowledged; however, long before the blues develops as an artistic and cultural form in the early twentieth century, the blues impulse to confront adversity and to express and share one’s anguish is reflected not only in the oral tradition, to which the blues belongs, but in the foundation stones of the written tradition—the slave narratives. Confronting a painful episode—of any duration—obviously involves reliving it in memory, which perforce modifies it, and giving voice to the experience transforms it even further. Hence the prisms of memory and language, together with the speaker’s motives, both conscious and unconscious, create a verbal text that evokes the original event and simultaneously tells a somewhat different story. In effect, these elements coalesce not only to transform the past but to rise above it. To name adversity—to call it out—is to control it, to render it bearable, as the blues form so powerfully demonstrates. Albert Murray compares the blues to classical tragedy by observing that “it would have the people for whom it is composed and performed confront, acknowledge, and proceed in spite of, and even in terms of, the ugliness and meanness inherent in the human condition.” (36). In a typical blues lyric we are presented with the 56 singer’s situation, explicit or implicit, and his or her response to it, a response consisting of confrontation and endurance strategies. The essential situation and the sober emotions it produces are undercut by a variety of devices, including wry humor, irony, fatalism, and stubborn tenacity. The result, quite often, is an ironic tone, a certain detachment and restraint, and a controlled acceptance of life’s absurdities and paradoxes. Moreover, the act of expression itself is cathartic and permits the protagonist to control and transcend the situation being described. A blues statement is not strictly narrative but proceeds according to the emotional association between the structural units, and its ultimate attitude is not sadness but rather an unwillingness to abandon the struggle to survive, as the following selection, “Jailhouse Blues” illustrates: (Lord, this house is gonna get raided—yes sir.) Thirty days in jail with my back turned to the wall turned to the wall Thirty days in jail with my back turned to the wall Look here Mr. Jail Keeper put another gal in my stall I don’t mind being in jail but I got to stay there so long so long I don’t mind being in jail but I got to stay there so long so long When every friend I had is done shook hands and gone You better stop your man from tickling me under my chin under my chin You better stop your man from tickling me under my chin ‘Cause if he keeps on tickling I’m sure gonna take him on in Good morning, blues [,] blues, how do you do how do you do Good morning, blues [,] blues, how do you do Well I just come here to have a few words with you (Sackheim 52) 57 The audacity of the blues protagonist resides in her refusal to be undone by her circumstances. Instead of giving in to despair because she is in jail, the singer attempts to accommodate herself to the situation and tells the jailer to “put another gal in my stall.” This line is followed, in the next stanza, by the sardonic detachment of “I don’t mind being in jail but I got to stay there so long.” In the third stanza she interrupts the story of her troubles to issue a wry warning to an unwary woman, and she concludes the lyric with an ironic dialogue with the blues. In a highly stylized line, the speaker addresses the blues as if it is a long-time acquaintance: “Good morning blues [,] blues, how do you do.” By confronting her situation through memory and the act of creative expression, the singer brings her adversity under control...