If Beale Street Could Talk

by

James Baldwin

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Shame, Judgment, and Morality Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Love, Support, and Hope Theme Icon
Racism, Fear, and Isolation Theme Icon
Shame, Judgment, and Morality Theme Icon
Time and Anticipation Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in If Beale Street Could Talk, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Shame, Judgment, and Morality Theme Icon

A significant part of Tish’s emotional journey in If Beale Street Could Talk has to do with her struggle to reject shame. Unfortunately, she often feels a sense of dishonor, since she’s aware that society might judge her for being a pregnant nineteen-year-old with an imprisoned lover. This kind of unfair judgment is exactly what Mrs. HuntFonny’s mother—sets forth when she first hears about the pregnancy, ultimately shaming Tish and trying to make her feel like she’s done something disgraceful. Thankfully, though, Tish’s parents and sister have already gone out of their way to make sure Tish knows she hasn’t done anything wrong by getting pregnant, stressing how important it is that she maintain a sense of pride and dignity even when people like Mrs. Hunt try to cut her down. Because of this, Tish maintains her self-respect, knowing that the only thing she’s guilty of is loving Fonny. Her difficult situation also encourages her to reevaluate the way she judges other women, as she briefly considers what it would take for her to become a prostitute, since she knows that she and her family will need extra money if they’re ever going to get Fonny out of jail. As she thinks in these terms, she realizes she has been casting unfair judgment on prostitutes for her entire life, finally understanding that the gravity of certain situations can change a person’s moral inhibitions. In this regard, Tish comes to value the significance of developing an internal pride, one that helps her ignore arbitrary notions of shame and dishonor that others mercilessly cast upon her. This, Baldwin insinuates, is how to cultivate self-assurance in the face of unfair judgment.

When Tish tells Fonny’s family that she’s pregnant, Mrs. Hunt doesn’t try to hide her scorn, making it clear that she doesn’t think Tish is reliable enough to care for a child. “And who is going to be responsible for this baby?” she asks. This might seem like a practical question, but it’s much more than that, since Mrs. Hunt condescendingly insinuates that Tish isn’t “responsible,” shaming her for thinking she can raise a child. Going on, Mrs. Hunt shows her disdain in an even more blatant manner, saying, “I guess you call your lustful action love. I don’t. I always knew that you would be the destruction of my son. You have a demon in you.” Mrs. Hunt tries to make Tish feel guilty about having gotten pregnant, even suggesting that she has destroyed Fonny’s life, though it’s quite clear that the true “destruction” of his life has to do with the fact that he’s been unfairly imprisoned. Nevertheless, Mrs. Hunt pounces on this opportunity to frame Tish as disgraceful and immoral, perhaps hoping to avoid her own feelings of inadequacy as a mother by focusing on what she thinks are Tish’s shortcomings.

Fortunately, Tish doesn’t let Mrs. Hunt’s hurtful words get to her, because her own family has made sure to tell her she shouldn’t cower in shame. When Tish tells her mother about the pregnancy, Sharon responds by saying, “What you crying about? Now, listen, you got enough on your mind without worrying about being a bad girl and all that jive-ass shit.” Similarly, when Tish’s father, Joseph, finds out, he eventually says, “Don’t you go thinking I think you a bad girl, or any foolishness like that.” It’s quite clear, then, that Tish’s parents want her to cast any notions of shame out of her head, insisting that getting pregnant doesn’t mean she’s a “bad girl” who should feel guilty about her situation. This sentiment becomes even more pronounced when Tish’s sister, Ernestine, sees her hanging her head after telling their parents about her pregnancy. “Unbow your head, sister,” she says. Ernestine encourages Tish not only to banish her feelings of guilt, but to adopt a sense of pride, subtly reminding her that she’s about to bring life into the world—a fact worth celebrating.

Tish’s relationship to the ideas of shame and morality changes as Fonny’s case becomes less and less hopeful. At one point, she lies awake at night and thinks about whether or not she’d be willing to cross certain boundaries to raise money to get Fonny out of jail. Thinking about the prostitutes she has known throughout her life, she reassesses the way she has judged them. “I remembered women I had known, but scarcely looked at, who had frightened me; because they knew how to use their bodies in order to get something that they wanted,” she reflects. It’s worth noting that Tish has thought for her entire life that she has “known” these prostitutes when, in reality, she has “scarcely looked at” them. This illustrates how quickly people cast judgment, foolishly assuming they know a person without actually taking the time to understand their life. “I now began to realize that my judgment of these women had had very little to do with morals,” Tish continues. “[…] My judgment had been due to my sense of how little they appeared to want. I could not conceive of peddling myself for so low a price. But, for a higher price? For Fonny?” When she thinks this, Tish realizes that no woman sells her body without having a good reason. What she previously failed to understand but is now attuned to is that it’s difficult to determine the morality of a situation—such as prostitution—without fully examining its complexities.

Although Tish herself doesn’t end up resorting to prostitution, she learns through her own desperation that it’s all too easy to cast shame on people who are only doing what they can to survive. As she strives to uphold her own pride during this turbulent period, Tish’s ideas about shame change, allowing Baldwin to intimate that conventional notions of disgrace often have “very little to do with morals.” By establishing this, the author suggests that people ought to learn to confidently reject the arbitrary kinds of shame that others might force upon them.

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Shame, Judgment, and Morality ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Shame, Judgment, and Morality appears in each chapter of If Beale Street Could Talk. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Shame, Judgment, and Morality Quotes in If Beale Street Could Talk

Below you will find the important quotes in If Beale Street Could Talk related to the theme of Shame, Judgment, and Morality.
Troubled About My Soul Quotes

I hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass.

And I didn’t say it the way I meant to say it. I meant to say it in a very offhand way, so he wouldn’t be too upset, so he’d understand that I was saying it without any kind of accusation in my heart.

Related Characters: Tish (Clementine) (speaker), Fonny (Alonzo Hunt)
Page Number: 4
Explanation and Analysis:

If you cross the Sahara, and you fall, by and by vultures circle around you, smelling, sensing, your death. They circle lower and lower: they wait. They know. They know exactly when the flesh is ready, when the spirit cannot fight back. The poor are always crossing the Sahara. And the lawyers and bondsmen and all that crowd circle around the poor, exactly like vultures. Of course, they’re not any richer than the poor, really, that’s why they’ve turned into vultures, scavengers, indecent garbage men, and I’m talking about the black cats, too, who, in so many ways, are worse. I think that, personally, I would be ashamed.

Related Characters: Tish (Clementine) (speaker)
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:

I’ve never come across any shame down here, except shame like mine, except the shame of the hardworking black ladies, who call me Daughter, and the shame of proud Puerto Ricans, who don’t understand what’s happened—no one who speaks to them speaks Spanish, for example—and who are ashamed that they have loved ones in jail. But they are wrong to be ashamed. The people responsible for these jails should be ashamed.

Related Characters: Tish (Clementine) (speaker)
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:

And I’m not ashamed of Fonny. If anything, I’m proud. He’s a man. You can tell by the way he’s taken all this shit that he’s a man. Sometimes, I admit, I’m scared—because nobody can take the shit they throw on us forever. But, then, you just have to somehow fix your mind to get from one day to the next. If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you’ll never make it.

Related Characters: Tish (Clementine) (speaker), Fonny (Alonzo Hunt)
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:

I can’t say to anybody in this bus, Look, Fonny is in trouble, he’s in jail—can you imagine what anybody on this bus would say to me if they knew, from my mouth, that I love somebody in jail?—and I know he’s never com­mitted any crime and he’s a beautiful person, please help me get him out. Can you imagine what anybody on this bus would say? What would you say? I can’t say, I’m going to have this baby and I’m scared, too, and I don’t want any­ thing to happen to my baby’s father, don’t let him die in prison, please, oh, please! You can’t say that. That means you can’t really say anything. Trouble means you’re alone.

Related Characters: Tish (Clementine) (speaker), Fonny (Alonzo Hunt)
Page Number: 8
Explanation and Analysis:

Now, listen, […] you got enough on your mind without worrying about being a bad girl and all that jive-ass shit. I sure hope I raised you better than that. If you was a bad girl, you wouldn’t be sitting on that bed, you’d long been turning tricks for the warden.

Related Characters: Sharon (speaker), Tish (Clementine)
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:

Tish […], when we was first brought here, the white man he didn’t give us no preachers to say words over us before we had our babies. And you and Fonny be to­gether right now, married or not, wasn’t for that same damn white man. So, let me tell you what you got to do. You got to think about that baby. You got to hold on to that baby, don’t care what else happens or don’t happen. You got to do that. Can’t nobody else do that for you. And the rest of us, well, we going to hold on to you. And we going to get Fonny out. Don’t you worry. I know it’s hard —but don’t you worry. And that baby be the best thing that ever happened to Fonny. He needs that baby. It going to give him a whole lot of courage.

Related Characters: Sharon (speaker), Tish (Clementine), Fonny (Alonzo Hunt)
Related Symbols: The Baby
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:

She moved away from me a little and put my glass in my hand. “Unbow your head, sister,” she said, and raised her glass and touched mine. “Save the children,” she said, very quietly, and drained her glass.

Related Characters: Tish (Clementine) (speaker), Sharon, Joseph, Ernestine (Sis)
Page Number: 47
Explanation and Analysis:

I guess you call your lustful action love […]. I don’t. I always knew that you would be the destruction of my son. You have a demon in you—I always knew it. My God caused me to know it many a year ago. The Holy Ghost will cause that child to shrivel in your womb. But my son will be forgiven. My prayers will save him.

Related Characters: Mrs. Hunt (speaker), Tish (Clementine), Fonny (Alonzo Hunt), Frank Hunt
Page Number: 69
Explanation and Analysis:

And Mrs. Hunt added, “These girls won’t be bringing me no bastards to feed, I can guarantee you that.”

“But the child that’s coming,” said Sharon, after a moment, “is your grandchild. I don’t understand you. It’s your grandchild. What difference does it make how it gets here? The child ain’t got nothing to do with that—don’t none of us have nothing to do with that!"

Related Characters: Tish (Clementine) (speaker), Fonny (Alonzo Hunt), Sharon, Ernestine (Sis), Mrs. Hunt
Page Number: 72
Explanation and Analysis:

I remembered women I had known, but scarcely looked at, who had frightened me; because they knew how to use their bodies in order to get something that they wanted. I now began to realize that my judgment of these women had had very little to do with morals. (And I now began to wonder about the meaning of this word.) My judgment had been due to my sense of how little they appeared to want. I could not conceive of peddling myself for so low a price.

But, for a higher price? for Fonny?

Related Characters: Tish (Clementine) (speaker), Fonny (Alonzo Hunt)
Page Number: 113
Explanation and Analysis: