Cryptic Endings

A very symbolic moment that caught my attention was the last scene in Baldwin’s “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon”. In it, the narrator picks up his son from a family friend’s place and proceeds to take him back to their room in order to get read for their journey to America. The two ride an elevator up with Paul, the narrator’s son, in his father’s arms.

I put him on my shoulder and walk out into the hall. Mme. Dumont looks up at him with her radiant, aging face.

“Ah,” she says, “you are going on a journey! How does it feel?”

“He doesn’t know yet,” I tell her. I walk to the elevator door and open in, dropping Paul down to the crook of my arm.

“She laughs again. “He will know later. What a journey! Fusqu’au nouveau monde!”

I open the cage and we step inside. “Yes,” I say, “all the way to the new world.” I press the button and the cage, holding my son and me, goes up.

Now, initially, this scene could be read as pretty straight forward. The narrator and his son are about to travel all the way to the new world and they are taking an elevator to their room so they can pack and head off. But, after Mr. Mitchell mentioned the possibly symbolism regarding the referral of the elevator as a “cage”, I began to think of alternative meanings to this ending. So, the first aspect to focus on is, as Mr. Mitchell pointed out, the “cage” that the narrator and his son ride to their room. The use of the word “cage” implies confinement, which is what the narrator has been getting at as he describes his past experiences in America and why they haunt him to this day. During his childhood, the narrator felt trapped in this role of always needing to serves to the white man’s needs. He had to be overly polite, subservient, while also giving them the benefit of the doubt. As he states when talking about Louisa’s experience with white people, “all the white people she had ever met needed, in one way or another, to be reassured, consoled, to have their consciences pricked but not blasted; could not, could not afford to hear a truth which would shatter, irrevocably, their image of themselves” (151). In their experience, in every aspect of their lives, they have had to cater to the white man’s needs. (And woman’s, for that matter). Even if they were being treated cruelly, they had to show them that their hearts meant well, even though they didn’t. They were forcibly put into this role that they never even auditioned for. Their lives were spent caged in this bubble, a confined space of which they didn’t have the power to break out of, having to obey the spoken and unspoken rules and regulations of white people. And now, moving to America with his family, the narrator worries that he’s just bringing his son and wife into the bubble with him.

Throughout this ending scene, the narrator seems very sarcastic, nervous, and a little pessimistic, which is very reasonable. His life may never be the same once he steps foot on American soil. And if he and his family’s life changes for the worse, he could be held responsible. He is the one bringing his family along in order to further his career, so he would be responsible if the environment ends up tearing them apart. He is the one bring his son into this cage, one that they may not be able to make their way out of.

A last observation that I noticed is that, when the narrator walks into his son’s room, Paul is asleep. In the beginning, we see that the narrator is worried about preserving his son’s innocence, and that if/ once he brings him to America, he will assumably be immersed in a hateful, racist environment, seemingly tainting his innocence. But, after talking to Vital, the narrator decides that they must travel to America, and so he wakes up his son, picks him up, and takes him into the elevator, which is one of the first steps in their journey. The narrator picks up his son and takes him into the elevator, but he says that they are going “all the way to the new world”. In this, the narrator could be inferring that they will soon enter a world where he can’t always hold his son’s hand. Paul is going to have to experience the harshness of the world sometime or another, and the time is now.

Now, all of this could be completely false, and Baldwin could be thinking of a different meaning behind his ending, but it’s interesting to see how this short ending can be interpreted in numerous ways. All in all, we know that the narrator has discovered that racism is everywhere and that Paris isn’t immune to it, so he sees that America may not be just a bad idea. There will be troubles adjusting, but the hope is that his family will stay strong as they travel overseas to the new world.