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Jesse’s Father
The lynching victim is a Black man who lived in Jesse’s town when Jesse was a child and was accused of attacking (and, mostly likely, raping) a white woman named Miss Standish. He tries to flee but is captured, castrated, and lynched in front of Jesse, Jesse’s father, Jesse’s mother, and hundreds of cheering white people. His lynching is particularly brutal in that he is lowered into and raised out of fire several times before being castrated, stoned, and burned once more. How Jesse feels in relationship to the lynching victim demonstrates his shift from caring about Black people to dehumanizing them.
Lynching Victim Quotes in Going to Meet the Man
The Going to Meet the Man quotes below are all either spoken by Lynching Victim or refer to Lynching Victim. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Going to Meet the Man Quotes
The man with the knife took the nigger’s privates in his hand, one hand, still smiling, as though he were weighing them. In the cradle of the one white hand, the nigger’s privates seemed as remote as meat being weighed in the scales; but seemed heavier, too, much heavier, and Jesse felt his scrotum tighten; and huge, huge, much bigger than his father’s, flaccid, hairless, the largest thing he had ever seen till then, and the blackest.
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Explanation and Analysis:
In this passage, an eight-year-old Jesse—alongside hundreds of other white people—is witnessing a lynching. As one of the white men prepares to castrate the lynching victim, Jesse notices, with fear, the size of the victim’s genitals. Baldwin is naming something very important here: the idea that at the root of white male rage is envy over the penis size—and therefore the sexual prowess—of Black men. The penis of a Black man is so powerful, Jesse learns, that it must be forcibly cut from his body. That Jesse compares the size of the man’s genitals to his father’s suggests that he Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi a
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Lynching Victim Character Timeline in Going to Meet the Man
The timeline below shows where the character Lynching Victim appears in Going to Meet the Man. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Going to Meet the Man
...attached to a tree, and then two Black hands bound together by the chain. The lynching victim is dropped closer to the fire, smoke pours up, and the crowd cheers with delight...
(full context)
...fire and the crowd cheers. The fire grows larger, and Jesse thinks he hears the lynching victim scream. Sweat is pouring down the man’s body as he is lowered and raised again....
(full context)
Jesse notices that the lynching victim wants death to come quickly, but the crowd wants it to be slow, and they...
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...strange. He feels a type of joy he has never felt before and regards the lynching victim ’s hanging body as the most beautiful and terrible object he has ever seen. As...
(full context)
The lynching victim looks up, and the man with the knife smiles as he takes the hanging man’s...
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As Jesse’s mother laughs with the other women, Jesse’s father walks them toward the lynching victim ’s dead body. The man’s head is torn apart and caved in, but it is...
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Back in the present, thinking of the protest leader in his cell, the lynching victim in the fire, and the knife that was used to kill him, Jesse becomes aroused...
(full context)
