“Go Tell It on The Mountain” by James Baldwin (post 1): Protagonist has visual illusions suggestive of multiple personality

The protagonist, John Grimes, is a well-functioning fourteen-year-old. The principal of his school says he is “very bright” (1, p. 15). But the visual illusions he has of his mother’s face and his own face are noteworthy. Since he is not psychotic, neurologically impaired, or on drugs, such illusions suggest multiple personality.

“…his mother’s face changed. [He was wide awake, but] Her face became the face that he gave her in his dreams, the face that had been hers in a photograph he had seen once, long ago, a photograph taken before he was born” (1, p. 17). Sometime multiples have difficulty distinguishing between dreams and waking experiences.

When doing some cleaning at home, “he attacked the mirror with the cloth, watching his face appear as out of a cloud…He stared at his face as though it were, as indeed it soon appeared to be, the face of a stranger, a stranger who held secrets that John would never know” (1, p. 23). Search “mirror” and “mirrors” for prior discussions.

1. James Baldwin. Go Tell It on The Mountain [1953]. New York, Vintage International/Penguin Random House, 2013.

2. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Baldwin