56 pages • 1 hour read
Claude BrownManchild in the Promised Land
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1965A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Slang
Throughout the novel, Claude directly addresses certain examples of slang popular in the Harlem community and discusses both its practical importance and its symbolic significance. The use of slang terms is central to urban life for the characters in Manchild, and it also provides them with a way to communicate outside the bounds of white supremacist social and cultural systems.
For example, Claude describes the popularization of the word “baby” among Black men: “I think everybody said it real loud because they liked the way it sounded. It was always, ‘Hey baby. How you doin’, baby?’ in every phrase of the Negro hip life” (154). Claude describes an occasion when a Black lawyer called him “baby,” which made him feel immediately at ease in the man’s presence. In this sense, it unites Black people of all backgrounds and professions:
I imagine there were many people in Harlem who didn’t feel they had too much in common with the Negro professionals […] but to hear one of these people greet you with the street thing, the ‘Hey, baby’—and he knew how to say it—you felt as though you had something strong in common (154).
Thus, the characters’ use of slang is not merely a detail meant to create realistic dialogue: it represents the networks of exclusively Black communication and exchange that run throughout the novel.
Religion
Claude encounters several major religious traditions throughout the novel, and each encounter allows him to both explore his own expanding spiritual consciousness in a new way and gain greater awareness of how the world around him is changing. After being exposed to conservative evangelical Christianity by his mother at a young age, he considers himself a religious skeptic—his distaste for her religious beliefs is also part of how the narrative represents generational divisions—but he remains open to learning about different religions and their various social impacts. In this sense, religion embodies or stands in for intellectual curiosity and an openness to new ideas.
The religion that has the greatest impact on Claude is Black Islam, which he discovers when he learns that many of his childhood friends became Muslims in prison. Although he takes many of their beliefs with a grain of salt and chooses not to convert, he has long conversations with them, asks them questions, and respects their new Muslim names. He also acknowledges the socioeconomic and political impacts Black Muslims are having on Harlem, and his awareness of these impacts changes how he views and experiences New York. The persistent presence of religion in a novel narrated by an essentially nonreligious character ultimately suggests that religion as a general way of approaching the world rather than as a specific belief system has tremendous importance throughout the narrative.
Music
Music functions similarly to religion throughout the novel: It has a material presence in Claude’s everyday life, but it also represents a way of interpreting and reinterpreting the world. When Claude discovers jazz at Warwick, “It seemed like something real different. It was something crazy […] the music, it was the most beautiful sound I’d heard in all my life” (133). When he eventually begins studying piano with professional teachers, he gains access to an entirely new community and sense of self: “After I really got started in music, I didn’t need anybody to recommend [new teachers]. I knew where I was going” (211). Heartbroken after the end of his relationship with Judy, he finds solace in a new Harlem jazz scene free of drugs and crime. He becomes aware that “the guys who felt that drugs had something to do with [music] didn’t make it as musicians” (341). Each time Claude looks at music, particularly jazz, from a new angle, he feels a fresh sense of energy, confidence, and happiness. In this sense, music represents his ability to loosen himself from fate and make empowered choices.
Like slang, music also functions as a way of communicating; in the context of this novel, it is a way that Black people can constitute and communicate their identities outside the bounds of white culture. For Claude, jazz is increasingly identified with Blackness, which is apparent when he realizes he cannot stay on rhythm when he plays with Black musicians. They tell him, “You got to get you a colored teacher if you really gon learn how to blow some good jazz,” so he begins studying with The Professor, concluding that “there is something to that color thing in music” (212). Thus, music generally and jazz specifically function in the novel as specifically Black forms of identification and communication.
