Autonomy and Control in Chester Himes' If He Hollers Let Him Go

Abstract

Have you ever taken the time to dissect your interactions throughout the day? When you meet with your supervisor, a co-worker, or your significant other, how do those situations typically play out? Unfortunately, most human interactions boil down to a simple equation of power. These interactions begin to define our identities and the things we believe attainable. Bob, the main character of our story, believes that he is on an upward climb towards his goal of "whiteness", however, we will see through several interactions between his boss Mac, a co-worker named Madge, his girlfriend Alice, and the police, that Bob really lives in a type of autonomous grey area where he is continuously equivocating about race and simultaneously getting further and further from his goal. We will see Bob realize that he isn't white, but that he believes he is also more than just "black" - as it's defined by whites in society. We will see that most of the outcomes within the world of "whiteness", Bob has no control over, even when he thinks he should or does. I argue that Chester Himes uses the character Bob in If He Hollers Let Him Go to show that autonomy is unattainable for the African American male while living within and chasing after this world of "whiteness": management, luxury cars, power, women. Bob believes he has upward mobility because of his position at work and his ability to purchase some symbols of "whiteness", but he learns throughout the novel that living within and chasing after these symbols makes him a slave to the definitions of a white world.