Wow, you're pretty strong, you cognize? ... Hey, you silence haven't told me how you know so much ab fall out me.... Lula, Lula, why don't you go to the party with me tonight? (81-84).
Of course, the last line is delivered by Clay according to Lula's specific direction (84), as if she were the director of the fill rather than merely an actor herself. This is Baraka saying that within the institute which dictates the actions of both characters, Lula certainly appears to be in charge, to the extent of her aliment Clay lines, shaping him to be precisely what she wants him to be.
However, she does not know what she wants him to be, for she is the one who is most utterly driven by forces beyond her control. She is the one-dimensional character trapped by forces beyond her control, forces which go back hundreds of years through generations of whites treating blacks as objects to be determine and controlled. The white character is fascinated by the power and arcanum of the black character, and instead of treating the black character as
Baraka's focus on Clay as the center of attention of the play is seen in his ambivalence. He has dreams beyond his middle class restrictations, dreams of creativity and freedom and vitality, all of which are threatening to Lula just as they are precisely what draws her to him. Underlying this is the repetition of the subject matter that whatever these characters try to make of themselves, they remain held back by deceit, by role-playing. Lula says, "And we'll pretend the people cannot see you," meaning by chance that the black psyche is the "invisible bit" in society.
She says, "And [we'll pretend] that you are free of your give storey. And I am free of my history" (88), meaning that of course they are not free of their own history of slavery.
an individual human being to be step by step known and understood, the white character immediately starts trying to limit and control and possess the black character, reflecting the white's attitude toward the black in slavery.
Of course, stuck in her stereotype, the white woman drawn to the black man but simultaneously seeking to destroy him, Lula does indeed nudge him to death, and then turns to another black man who enters the subway to begin the same dance of death once more.
Baraka, Amiri. The Dutchman. The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader. William Harris, ed. New York: Thunder's verbalise Press, 1991. 76-99.
However, when Clay does begin to express some of this breaking out and breaking free, Lula kills him. Is Baraka saying that this is what will always happen when a black man refuses to express himself honestly and bravely? No, but he is saying that that is the risk that a black person takes in a still white-dominated society when he does dare speak out and take action
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