Banana Bottom by Claude McKay

First published: 1933

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Psychological realism

Time of work: Early 1900’s

Locale: The town of Jubilee and the village of Banana Bottom, Jamaica

Principal Characters:

• Tabitha (Bita) Plant, the protagonist, a twenty-two-year-old black girl who has been educated abroad
• Jordan Plant, Bita’s father, a prosperous landowner
• Malcolm Craig, a white Calvinist minister in Jubilee
• Priscilla Craig, Malcolm’s wife, also a minister
• Squire Gensir, a British aristocrat
• Herald Newton Day, a self-important seminarian
• Hopping Dick Delgado, a fast-talking dandy
• Jubban, Jordan Plant’s trusted foreman and Bita’s devoted protector

The Novel

Banana Bottomis the story of a young Jamaican woman’s discovery of her country, her people, and herself. The novel begins with the return to Jamaica of twenty-two-year-old Tabitha “Bita” Plant, who has been abroad for seven years. After a flashback in which he explains the reasons for her absence, McKay tells the story of Bita’s life from her homecoming to her marriage, concluding with a brief epilogue that shows her as a contented wife and mother.

The tone of the book is detached, the pace leisurely. Like a loquacious village storyteller, McKay moves from episode to episode as if there were no direction to his narrative. When, at the end of Banana Bottom, Bita freely chooses a husband and a way of life, each of the earlier encounters takes on a new significance. It is then clear that every character, every incident, and every discussion in the novel has in some way affected Bita’s development.

Although as the first native black girl to receive an English education, Bita Plant returns home a celebrity, she had very nearly been ruined in her childhood, when she had sexual intercourse with a half-crazy musical genius. Although he was charged with rape and sent away, Bita’s reputation was tarnished. Fortunately, her father, the prosperous farmer Jordan Plant, could turn to the white missionaries Malcolm and Priscilla Craig, who took Bita to their home in Jubilee. Later, the Craigs decided to use her as an experiment, to show how an English education could transform a native girl. What they did not expect was that Bita would return to Jamaica with a mind of her own.

Bita’s vacillations between doing what is expected of her and making her own choices can be charted through her movements between her home in Jubilee, where the Craigs expect her to act in accordance with the rules of their strict denomination, and her home in Banana Bottom, where she has more latitude. After her return to Jamaica, Bita at first moves back in with the Craigs and, just as easily, accepts the plans they have made for her, even agreeing to marry another of their projects, the ministry student Herald Newton Day. Although she enjoys the activities at the mission, however, Bita soon becomes fascinated with her own culture, as represented by the effervescent horse-dealer and gambler Hopping Dick Delgado. Although she does not at the time realize it, when she sneaks away from the mission to go with him to functions of which the Craigs disapprove, Bita is beginning the process of rejecting Jubilee in favor of Banana Bottom and the culture of her own people.

Additionally, the more Bita sees of her self-centered, self-important fiancé, the less she wants to spend her life with him. When her stepmother Naomi Plant (Anty Nommy) becomes ill, Bita is shocked to find herself secretly delighted, because in leaving the mission, she will be escaping from Herald.

At Banana Bottom, Bita is free of the restraints that she always feels in Jubilee. She has long conversations with the freethinker Squire Gensir, a white British aristocrat, who places great value on native folklore and customs. She also comes to appreciate the power of Obi, the African god of evil, who may very well be responsible for Herald’s disgrace: Herald sexually abuses a nanny goat, an episode that ends his career in the church as well as any expectation that he will marry Bita.

When Bita returns to Jubilee, however, it becomes clear that Bita’s unhappiness at the mission was not merely the result of Herald’s proximity but instead reflected her growing rebellion against the Craigs’ view of life. Simply because she feels so imprisoned, Bita declares her intention of marrying Hopping Dick. Desperate, the Craigs send for Anty Nommy, who first disposes of Bita’s suitor by appearing to expect an immediate wedding and then takes Bita home with her. It is obvious to everyone that Bita will never again be able to live at Jubilee.

At Banana Bottom, Bita can at last decide her own destiny. Freed from the Craigs’ expectations, she comes to recognize the worth of her uncle’s trusted foreman, Jubban, who, though uneducated, is wise, courageous, and good. At a suitable time after the tragic deaths of Jordan Plant and both of the Craigs, Bita and Jubban are married in a double wedding, along with Hopping Dick, who has been captured by Bita’s friend Yoni Legge. At the end of the novel, Bita has inherited Squire Gensir’s property and, with Jubban and an increasing family, is enjoying the simple life of a well-to-do peasant.

The Characters

Since Banana Bottom is the story of Bita Plant’s self-discovery, it is not surprising that she is the only character who can be seen to develop in the course of the novel. Certainly, when Bita comes home to Jamaica, she is already more complex than the Craigs believe her to be. She loves and respects her adoptive parents, and initially she seems willing to fulfill their ambitions for her, especially since her parents are in agreement about her future. Bita, however, is still the same girl who for so long had run wild at Banana Bottom, and she is also the girl who threw herself into the arms of Crazy Bow because she was so overwhelmed by his music. She is also still a Jamaican. If she is exposed to her heritage, she will respond to it, and ironically, by encouraging intellectual curiosity, her European education has merely made her exposure a certainty.

McKay does not, however, present his heroine as a person at the mercy of her emotions. Every time Bita sees something new, she first observes, then decides whether or not to participate. Her detachment is impressive. The moment she comes back to consciousness after fainting in religious ecstasy at a revival meeting, Bita begins to analyze her own reactions. Her development, then, is not merely accidental. Throughout the novel, Bita is busy making the most of every experience, watching herself and others in order to discover her true nature and to make herself into the person she wants to be.

The other characters, though not as dynamic as Bita, are still fairly complex. Moreover, although McKay’s lengthy descriptions and explanations prevent the others from being stereotypes or caricatures, each is primarily important as an influence on Bita. For example, both of the Craigs are complex characters, with the inconsistencies and irrationalities common to all human beings. Malcolm Craig is a kindly man who combines a lifelong dedication to the cause of black freedom with a sincere belief in a religious faith that would deny the black heritage. Priscilla Craig, too, can be compassionate and loving; unfortunately, she is so concerned with the opinions of others, which she rightly realizes can affect the mission, that she seems incapable of spontaneity or even of admitting that she has marital relations with her husband. Nevertheless, although McKay makes the Craigs understandable and even sympathetic characters, he also uses them to represent the system that Bita must reject if she is to develop.

Similarly, Belle Black, Yoni Legge, Hopping Dick, and the disreputable Tack Tally are complex characters. The daughter of a happily unmarried couple, Belle has a fine voice but unimpressive moral standards. Yoni, the pretty young sewing-mistress, enjoys her status in the community but periodically succumbs to her passions. Despite his strutting, Hopping Dick is easily cowed when he is threatened with marriage to Bita, and he is just as easily persuaded to marry Yoni, the mother of his baby. Tack Tally, the leader of the rum-shop loudmouths, is also weaker than he pretends to be. When he cannot find the witch doctor to remove a curse that he believes has been placed upon him, he commits suicide. While these complicated individuals are interesting in their own right, again their primary importance is the fact that they represent one of Bita’s options: the spontaneous world that the Craigs deny, a world of dancing, drinking, and fornication, a world in which the African gods still hold sway.

There are several minor characters in Banana Bottom who reflect McKay at his comic best, such as the gossipy Sister Phibby Patroll and the insufferable Herald Newton Day, whose downfall is hilarious, even though McKay makes no preparation whatsoever for it. Among all of his characters, major and minor, only one fails to come to life. In Squire Gensir, McKay was describing his own mentor and patron, the English student of Jamaican dialect Walter Jekyll. Unfortunately, Gensir lectures; he does not live. Thus even though he is important to Bita’s development, as in real life Jekyll was important to McKay, the Squire remains a hazy figure, a voice from the author’s past, rather than a creation for his novel.

Critical Context

In the 1920’s, Claude McKay was considered one of the titans of the Harlem Renaissance. In his introduction to McKay’s Harlem Shadows (1922), Max Eastman rather surprisingly called the volume “the first significant” poetic work by a black. Five years later, even though black critics including W. E. B. Du Bois were offended by its depiction of African Americans, McKay’s Home to Harlem (1928) was immensely popular. White critics, at least, praised it for its realism. McKay’s second novel, Banjo (1929), which described the adventures of a group of black seamen beached by choice in Marseilles, was financially successful, although still annoying to many black critics.

By 1933, when McKay’s last novel, Banana Bottom, was published, the Great Depression had hit. Through no fault of the writer or the work itself, the book was a financial failure. Although McKay eventually found funding to bring out his autobiography, A Long Way from Home (1937), Banana Bottom was the last of his creative works. Ironically, many critics now believe that it is also his best.

It is true that those who continue to interpret McKay’s novels as unthinking glorifications of primitivism tend either to focus on his poetry or to dismiss him altogether as a writer whose significance is purely historical. Recent studies, such as those by Wayne F. Cooper and Tyrone Tillery, have revealed subtleties in McKay’s fiction that had been overlooked. It is now increasingly thought that Claude McKay’s fiction may well surpass his poetry and that Banana Bottom, the finest of his three novels, is alone worthy to ensure his high standing among African American writers.

Bibliography

Cobham, Rhonda. “Jekyll and Claude: The Erotics of Patronage in Claude McKay’s Banana Bottom.” In Queer Diasporas, edited by Cindy Patton and Benigno Sánchez-Eppler. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000. Reads Banana Bottom from the point of view of queer literary theory, emphasizing the role of whiteness in his novel and the use of the patronage relationship as a coded representation of homosexuality.

Cooper, Wayne F. Claude McKay: Rebel Sojourner in the Harlem Renaissance. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987. Major biography, primarily intended to show that although McKay was an important figure among Harlem Renaissance writers, he was in no way typical of the group but disagreed with them in important ways. A sound and illuminating work.

Cooper, Wayne F. Introduction to The Passion of Claude McKay: Selected Poetry and Prose, 1912-1948, edited by Wayne F. Cooper. New York: Schocken Books, 1973. Excellent summary of McKay’s life and his literary development. Considers Banana Bottom the high point of McKay’s novels.

Davis, Arthur P. From the Dark Tower: Afro-American Writers, 1900 to 1960. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1974. Sees McKay’s primary theme, “the superiority of the primitive black to the middle-class Negro and to the white,” as untenable. Argues that despite McKay’s obvious talent, little of his work will last. In addition to lacking a sound intellectual basis, Davis claims, McKay’s fiction is poorly constructed.

Frederick, Rhonda D. “’With Him Watch Chain/ A Knock Him Belly’: Migration, Masculinity, and the Colón Man in Banana Bottom, “Window,” and Tropic Death.” In “Colón Man a Come”: Mythographies of Panamá Canal Migration. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2005. Study of the representation of foreign laborers imported to construct the Panama Canal in literary and historical texts. Reads Banana Bottom’s representation of the Colón Man and places it in the context of Caribbean literary traditions.

Giles, James B. Claude McKay. Boston: Twayne, 1976. Intended to correct earlier assessments of McKay as an uncompromising revolutionary and an obdurate primitivist. Giles also insists that McKay’s place as a major figure in African American literature rests on his novels, rather than his poetry.

McLeod, A. L., ed. Claude McKay: Centennial Studies. New Delhi, India: Sterling, 1992. Collection of essays presented at a 1990 international conference held in Mysore, India, on “Claude McKay, the Harlem Renaissance, and Caribbean Literature.” Of particular interest to readers of Banana Bottom are McLeod’s “An Ideal Woman: Claude McKay’s Composite Image” and Emmanuel S. Nelson’s “Community and Individual Identity in the Novels of Claude McKay.”

Rahming, Melvin B. The Evolution of the West Indian’s Image in the Afro-American Novel. Millwood, N.Y.: Associated Faculty Press, 1986. In an attempt to explain the hostility often seen between two groups with a common African heritage, Rahming looks at the ways in which West Indians are shown by African American writers, in contrast to the self-images presented in novels by West Indians themselves. Includes a perceptive discussion of Banana Bottom.

Ramesh, Kotti Sree, and Kandula Nirupa Rani. Claude McKay: The Literary Identity from Jamaica to Harlem and Beyond. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2006. Includes a chapter reading Banana Bottom as a kind of literary homecoming for the expatriate McKay.

Stoff, Michael B. “Claude McKay and the Cult of Primitivism.” In The Harlem Renaissance Remembered, edited by Arna Bontemps. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972. Asserts that McKay’s novels reflect his commitment to primitivism. The theme of Banana Bottom, Stoff argues, is the conflict between the repressive “civilized Christ-God” and the real ruler of Jamaica, the “African Obeah-God of freedom and primeval sensuality.”

Tillery, Tyrone. Claude McKay: A Black Poet’s Struggle for Identity. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991. Critical biography that emphasizes the political environment in which McKay lived and wrote. Sees him as typifying “the larger problems of identity, vocation, and politics” faced by black artists of his era. Includes an extensive bibliography.