Turners Come and Gone by August Wilson - Essay Example

August Wilson uses “song” as a metaphor for the life struggle of Loomis. The solo of Loomis’s life can be also called the “song of freedom”. The theme of “biding song” represents the development of the character, his psychological state, and his search for personal identity.
At the beginning of the story, Wilson describes Loomis as a person who has lost everything: his family and his cultural background. His soul suffered from emptiness and agony. This state was caused by Turner who: “has got you (Loomis) bound up to where you can’t sing your own song. Couldn’t sing it them seven years ‘cause you were afraid he would snatch it from under you” (Wilson, 1992). During this period, individual freedom coincided with the absence of physical coercion, and the Northern city and boardinghouse for Loomis became a symbol of a new nation. The start of the Loomis's journey into the North marks the beginning of his “song”, it was his "mark on life" (Wilson, 1992).
Two themes are represented here: looking for the wife and transformations of cultural identity. The first theme is depicted in the play, but the second one is hidden.
During the progressive era, Loomis flocked to the city, attracted by economic opportunity and the promise of a better life. The soul of Loomis is fractured, but new opportunities are proposed to help him to overcome the state of numbness. A “Binding song” is a synonym for the cultural identity of Loomis. Enslaved Africans had no voice, they could not sing, but "free men of color" who lived in the North, or migrated to the Northern city like Loomis, received a great opportunity to sing his song.
The development of Loomis’s character is connected with the key question 'Who am I?'. Identity is a definition, an interpretation of the self that establishes what and where the person is in both social and psychological terms. At the end of the play, the “new character” of Loomis shows that when one has identified one is situated. Individuals like Loomis, through their identification with the nation, can be compared with believers. The individuals who compose the group feel bound to each other by the very fact that they have a common faith.
The development of Loomis’s character shows that his identity fulfills three major functions: it helps to make choices, makes possible relationships with others, and gives strength and resilience. The defining criteria of “binding song” are continuity over time and differentiation from others. It means Loomis has to find his identity, which “binds” people of the same nation. Continuity springs from the conception of the nation as a historically rooted entity that projects into the future. In this case, the metaphor “binding song” means a “bridge” between the past and future for Loomis, and for this reason, Loomis tries to find his wife perceiving this continuity through a set of experiences that spread out across time and united by a common meaning, something that only “insiders” can grasp.
Differentiation stems from the consciousness of forming a community with a shared culture, attached to a concrete territory, both elements leading to the distinction between members and “the rest” and “the different”, but the “binding song” is the element that helps to transform a tormented soul whose song is full of sorrow, anger, and self-pity into a self-sufficient personality who "shine like new money” (Wilson, 1992). The search for identity includes the question of what is the proper relationship of the individual to society as a whole. Read More