LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake, Fall 2001
Sample Student Midterm

Martin Perez
Dr. Craig White
LITR 5731
February 19,2003

Hope and Hopelessness

Hope and Hopelessness through Religion, Flight, and Literacy

 Why do we have hope?  What it is the drive in us that keeps us going?  The history of many Africans is one of hope.  A part of their history begins as Africans who were torn from their country and driven into the perilous of an appalling life all over the world.  When first taken from their home, many chose to end their life than face more of the atrocities they had been made to endure since their capture.   However, many who survived and were sold into slavery and were forced to face the cruelty of mankind, hung on to the anticipation that life for them, as they knew it would one day change for the better.  Objective 3a notes, “factors in setbacks, the need to rise again, and a quest for group dignity.  One point to this objective is that of hope, regardless of how hopeless a situation will get, the drive to get up and persist will endure.   Hope and hopelessness is a theme echoed in the Classic Slave Narratives, Song of Solomon, and Push.

In the Classic Slave Narratives, a former slave gives the accounts of many disappointing events in his life.  Gustavus Vassa tells of being kidnapped from his home and torn away from his family never to see them again.   When reading accounts of his life, the anguish that he went through can be felt, and the thought of how can someone go on after such misery enters the mind.  Vassa’s life is one filled with hopelessness, however he always seems to find the hope to hang on and persevere.   A major point in Vassa’s life was the faith in God taught to him. He gives reference to God many times in his story.

Vassa gives the descriptions of the events being portrayed at a sale auction of newly arrived Africans.  Vassa writes, “to see their distress and hear their cries at parting.  O, ye nominal Christians!  Might not an African ask you, learn you this from your God, who says unto you, do unto all men as you would men should do unto you” (63).  It was disappointing to Vassa to see the way slaves were being treated.  The word of this loving God taught, “to do unto others as they would do to you,” was the God of the White man.    However, all Vassa saw was the greed and cruelty in the faces of buyers looking to by a slave with no regard to the fact they were brothers sisters, mothers, fathers, or to the mere perception that they were human.

Things would soon turn around for Vassa.  He writes that after being in a miserable state, “the kind and unknown hand of the Creator, who in every deed leads the blind in a way they know not, now began to appear to my comfort” (65).    What once seemed as a hopeless situation for Vassa was now turned around and he had a little hope that things would be better than the place he was now living.  Things for a while did get better for Vassa, he was put on ship for England, and while on board he made a friend who would become dear to him and showed and instructed him in many things. 

 One of the things that his dear friend instructed him in was the Christian belief in God.  Even though, at first he could not understand he states, “And from what I could understand by him of this God, and in seeing that these white people did not sell another as we did, I was much pleased” (70).  When in the beginning of being taught about God, he did not understand much about the Christian belief, but he knew that they, the white to whom this God belonged to did not sell each other.  Soon after Vassa was also baptized in the Christian way, so he could go to heaven.  By becoming a Christian, and believing in God, Vassa would acquire much of his hope that would get him out of his hopelessness states. 

Vassa, describes the events that took place that would secure his belief in God and not on man.  While onboard the ship Jason, he saw a women with her child fall from one deck to another, he also fell from one deck to another, as did another man.  To everyone’s amazement he was not hurt as the same with the other man, and women and child.  Vassa states, “I thought I could plainly trace the hand of God; without whose permission a sparrow cannot fall.  I began to raise my fear from man to him alone, and to call daily on his holy name, with fear and reverence” (91).  Vassa’s belief in God was strengthened and this helped increase his hope.

 Vassa would need this hope because soon after he received his new hope in God, his Master was prepared to sell him.  After pleading for his freedom to no avail, Vassa stated, “ I could not get any right among men here, I hoped I should hereafter in Heaven” (98).  Hopelessness had entered Vassa he thought he did something to displease God, so God was punishing him.  He states, “I felt that the Lord was able to disappoint me in all things, and immediately considered my present situations as a judgment of Heaven, on account of my presumption in swearing”(99).  After feeling hopeless Vassa repented and asked for God to help and not abandon him. 

Hope soon returned to Vassa, and he considered his “trials and disappointments are sometimes for our good,” he thought perhaps that God had permitted him to be sold for something good.  He did not know what God had planned for him, but he was willing to accept whatever God had in store for him.  However, he states, “mixed with some faint hope that the Lord would appear for my deliverance”(100).   Vassa was conflicted with hope and hopelessness, hopelessness because of the situation he was in and hope that somehow he would be delivered. 

Vassa, would go through more trials and his hope in God would fade, however he would again return to believe in God and his hope would be reestablished.  He believed that both the oppressor and the oppressed were in the hands of God and that his only hope would be in God.

In Toni Morrison’s book, Song of Solomon we have the hopelessness of many who hope for a better life.  Milkman’s hope is in the search for his identity. Milkman’s life starts out as one of hope, in a time when many things were hopeless for many Black’s in the U.S., he was the first Black baby born in the hospital where his family lived.  However, on the day before he was born there was a man on the roof of the hospital that jumped, only to learn that he could not fly. 

The book notes that this must have left an impression on Milkman’s life even though he had not been born.  Mr. Smith’s blue silk wings must have left their mark, because when the little boy discovered, at four, the same thing Mr. Smith had learned earlier, that only birds and airplanes could fly, he lost all interest in himself (9).  Hopelessness had entered into Milkman’s life at an early age, however, unlike Gustavus Vassa whose hope came from the belief in God, his came from the notion of flying:

Milkman stared off into the sky for inspiration, and while glancing

toward the rooftops of the used-car places, he saw a white peacock

poised on the roof of a long low building that served as headquarters

for Nelson Buick.  He was about to accept the presence of the bird as

one of those waking dreams he was subject to whenever indecisiveness

was confronted with reality…(178).

Milkman looked up into the sky for inspiration, this is where his strength and hope would come from.  Milkman felt again his unrestrained joy at anything that could fly (178).  Milkman and his friend Guitar chased the peacock, and when it didn’t fly away, Milkman asked the question, “How come it can’t fly no better than a chicken?”  Guitar answered that it had too much tail and “All that jewelry weighs it down.  Like vanity, can’t nobody fly with all that shit.  Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down” (179).  Milkman wished that he could fly, but all the “shit” in his life created the hopelessness that kept him down.

Milkman wanted to get away from his parents, he states, “He just wanted to beat a path away from his parents’ past, which was also their present and which was threatening to become his present as well” (180).   Much of what kept Milkman hopeless was his mother and father whom he felt had filled his life with misery.  His hope for freedom was to escape from his parents.  Milkman felt that he had to go out on his own, because his family was driving him crazy (222).  His father wanted him to be him and his mother wanted him to hate his father the way she did.

            On his journey to find his identity Milkman met a women named sweet.  When he slept with her one night he had this dream:

It was a warm dreamy sleep all about flying about sailing high over

the earth.  But not with arms stretched out like airplane wings, nor

shot forward like Superman in a horizontal dive, but floating,

cruising, in the relaxed position of a man lying on a couch reading a

newspaper.  Part of his flight was over the dark sea, but it didn’t frighten

him because he knew he could not fall.  He was alone in the sky, but

somebody was applauding him, watching him and applauding (298).

Not being able to fly like a bird gave Milkman a feeling of hopelessness, the way he thought of his family as being hopelessly helpless.  However, this dream he had he was not flying like a bird but floating, this dream could have somehow given him the hope, he desired.  It was also during this journey that Milkman began to feel that he did not truly hate his family, and the thought that he did now seemed silly, “Hating his parents, his sisters, seemed silly now” (300).  Milkman was also beginning to have ill feelings about all the bad things he had done in his life. 

By the end of the book, Milkman realizes that his tail feathers, like that of the Peacocks, was heavy with jewelry and as he began to unload this jewelry he would soon be able to “fly away.”   After his aunt Pilate was killed, he realized that without leaving the ground she could fly.  Milkman’s hope came; that to fly away, did not always mean you had to do so like a bird. 

In the book Push, a story by Sapphire, she writes about a young girl named Precious who finds her hope through literacy.  Precious’s life is filled with heartache and bad luck, but she turns that all around when she begins to learn to read.  Both her mother and father sexually, emotionally, and physically abused her.  At the age of twelve, instead of learning to read, she was giving birth to her first baby by her father.  By her second pregnancy by her father, Precious could have just given up and gotten on welfare like her mother had wanted her to do.  However, Precious chose not to give up hope.

What gave Precious hope was that Mrs. Lichenstein came to her home and told her about Higher Education Alternative/Each One Teach One and that Mr. Wicher had said she was a good student.  Precious states, “My heart is all warm – half of it at least – thinking about Mr. Wicher say I’m a good student” (16).  Precious being told that she was a good student would plant the seed, which would lead to the end of her hopelessness. 

Precious was determined to learn to read. Although her mother wanted her to learn something like computers, so she could get a job, Precious wanted to learn to read. Precious states, “Mama wrong.  I is learning.  I’m gonna start going to Family Literacy class on Tuesdays.  Important to read to baby after it’s born” (65).  Precious knew it was important to learn to read not just for herself but also for her new baby that was on the way.  She was going to teach her baby to read, she was going to give her baby hope and not hopelessness like her parents gave her.  However, after her baby was born, Precious was torn between going to school to learn and giving up her baby for adoption.  She did not want to give up her baby, but she also wanted to learn because she knew that was the way to get out of the hopelessness she was in. 

After finding herself in a desperate situation and having to leave her home with no place to go, Precious made up her mind.  She thinks to herself, “What I gonna be, queen of babies?  No, I gonna be queen of those ABC’s – readin’ ‘n writin’.   I not gonna stop going to school ‘n I not going to give Abdul up…” (75).  Precious goes to live in a halfway house, and life seems to be going okay for Precious, until her mother comes and visits and tells her that her father has just died from AIDS.  She is again hit with bad news, but instead of giving up, she starts going to meetings for people with AIDS and finds strength in these meetings.  Instead of giving up when all seemed hopeless, Precious finds hope in others with the same disease.

One day Precious steals her chart from the counselor at the halfway house, and reads that the counselor thinks she would benefit more if she gave up on her studies and worked as a home attendant.  This angers Precious and makes her more determined to get her GED.  With so much pain in her life Precious could have easily given up, but she learned to read and this gave her the hope that one day she would have her GED and make a better life for herself and her children.

Regardless of how hopeless a situation can get, if we find something that gives us strength, we can have hope and rise with dignity and move on from whatever gets us down.  Gustavus Vassa found his strength and hopes in God. While Milkman learned that to get out of hopelessness he had to make himself lighter by unloading things in his life that was keeping him down and from flying away.  For Precious it was simply learning to read that she found her hope to survive.

Works Cited

Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York: Borzi Books, 1996

Sapphire. Push. New York: First Vintage Contemporaries Edition, May 1997

Vassa, Gustavus. “Gustavus Vassa, the African.” Gates, Henry Louis, ed. The Classic Slave Narratives, New York: Mentor 1987 (15-242)