Go tell it on the mountain by James Baldwin - Essay Example

“In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” The “In the Dream Begin Responsibility” is a story well dominated with the theme of hostility and pure confusion and complete disillusionment. The mother and the father presented in the story; instead of being icons of love and harmony are portrayed as symbols of hate, sadness, and continuous source of unhappiness. In the opinion of Schwartz, most people are evaded by happiness because of their incapability to contain stress of life. Additionally, most people are not productive because they tend to hide in the face of reality.

In the author’s view, acceptance of realities of life enhances one’s productivity in life. In the story, a lot of trouble mars marriage because what connects the couple is not the connection of love but the pretence of commitment dominated by the love of money, wealth, and status. The Father wants to be associated with the fame and the respect of the future wife’s family. This greed drives this man which later turns to be sore when they finally reach the marriage life. The narrator says, “My father is only mindful of the wealth and the fame that he stands to benefit ultimately if he marries my mother.

” The narrator also says that the father is concerned on the money-generating mission above any other things. The narrator says “my father only brags to my mother of the depth of his pocket and how he has money. He has to love to share with my mother.” The father is material driven. He seems not to care about anything and he has confidence in his money. He loves the taste of power and “he delights when he condemns people. He seeks to claim sovereignty over people: this is the arrogance of life that seems to content him.

”The pain and confusion comes when it is evidently notable that the mother also has a different concept and weird perspective of a happy marriage. She is totally misled of what really makes a happy family relationship. The mother is dominated with ego and pride. She sees herself as the most intelligent creature on earth. This makes her to be coined in her own cocoon without being open with her fiancé. In any relationship where people have a lot to hide than share, trouble always shoots in. suspicion is always evident and mistrust always sets in between the couples.

This creates constant disharmony and insecurity which results to quarrels and, fights and ultimately divorce. The mother is also driven by the illusions, which are farfetched from the reality. She lives with the illusions in the movie on how love affairs should be done. She has wrong concepts of how marriage proposal should be made. She draws her concepts from the movie and her belief is taken on the movies on how things should be done and how she should be treated. These were all brought to an array in Coney Island where she was proposed to; “a thing that sends her into tears.

” The mother’s naivety and close mindedness brought her to the ultimate confusion of life and deprived her of the happiness she had been waiting for the whole of her life. The difference of opinions and different concepts of life brings total disharmony among the couples. When parents are in total disagreement, they cannot live happily and the only result of their marriage is children with monstrous character who cannot cope with others in the society. “Home environment in a wrong father finally becomes unbearable to all family members.

”Work CitedSchwartz, Delmore, and James Atlas. In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories. New York: New Directions, 2012. Print.