Joe Turner’s Come and Gone: Act One: Scene Two Summary & Analysis

Although Bynum seems rather situated and settled in Seth’s house, Seth affirms in this moment that the old man has indeed spent his fair share of days wandering and living a transient lifestyle. This is perhaps why he’s so apparently able to relate to people like Jeremy and Herald Loomis. Unlike Seth, he has experienced the insatiable desire to roam throughout America (and/or some negative force driving him to do so).

Once again, Bynum proves that he’s willing to grant Herald the benefit of the doubt, saying that he’s “alright” and that he just seems strange because he’s obsessed with something. Bynum’s accepting mentality is the result of his own past as a wanderer, a transient man searching for something. Indeed, Bynum has had “something on his mind” before, so he understands Herald’s situation. Seth, on the other hand, has spent his life in Pittsburgh, establishing himself as a stable craftsman and landlord. As such, it’s harder for him to sympathize with Herald’s need to spend his life searching for his lost wife.

Although Selig’s choice to leave home is similar to the decisions other transient characters make in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, it’s worth noting that his is purely motivated by escapist desire and interpersonal conflict. Whereas black migration and transience is inextricably linked to the history of racism and the legacy of slavery in America, Selig’s decision to leave home has almost nothing to do with historical or cultural circumstances. Rather, he merely wants to flee a marriage that has soured, proving that travel is often used as a form of escapism even for white people who don’t have to contend with the same bigotry and injustice.

Once again, Wilson accentuates how the consequences of American slavery bring themselves to bear on a post-slavery world. Although Selig is a more or less friendly character, he reveals in this moment that his skills as a people finder are rooted in racism and oppression, since his family members made their wealth by tracking down black people so that other white people could enslave them. Once slavery ended, though, people finders naturally had to adapt, and so Selig started finding black people for other black people, a trade that was surely especially lucrative in the decades directly after slavery, when slaves who had been scattered throughout the country started trying to find their families. This bit of information casts Selig as a more ominous figure than he previously appeared, and the audience begins to understand that he is, above all, motivated by profit, not by compassion.

Once it’s been made apparent that Selig’s trade as a people finder grows out of a tradition of racism, it’s no surprise to hear that his current methods are exploitative and dishonest. As somebody who both takes people away and brings them back, Selig occupies an interesting position in a community torn between transience and stability. On the one hand, he helps satisfy a person’s desire to escape; on the other hand, he helps satisfy another person’s desire to regain something missing. As such, he provides an outlet for two distinct—and contradictory—feelings, ultimately profiting off of his clients’ emotional discrepancies.