The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley

First published: 1981

Type of plot: Historical neorealism

Time of work: The late 1970’s, 1930-1965, and precolonial days to the twentieth century

Locale: Philadelphia, the mountains of central Pennsylvania, and some areas southward, near Virginia and Maryland

Principal Characters:

• John Washington, the narrator/protagonist, a professor of history and a historical scholar
• Moses Washington, his father
• Judith Powell, his best friend and the woman with whom he is living
• “Uncle” Josh (Snakebelly) White, and
• “Old” Jack Crawley, close friends of Moses Washington and surrogate fathers to John Washington

The Novel

John Washington, the protagonist of Bradley’s The Chaneysville Incident, is a successful young historian living in Philadelphia and teaching at a large urban university in that city. Adept at his profession and comfortable in the academic world, he seems to be almost a paragon of achievement, an exemplar of the kind of life an industrious, intelligent black man might lead in the latter part of the twentieth century in the United States. Still, Washington is at a critical point in his life. He is becoming increasingly aware of some compelling questions about himself and his past—questions that he knows he has been avoiding—and he realizes that he is on the threshold of psychic chaos which can only be controlled if he stops suppressing them. The narrative thread of the novel involves Washington’s efforts to discover the meaning of his past, to understand the significance of his “home ground,” and to establish a spiritual foundation that will permit another person to share his existence. The course of the novel takes Washington back toward his origins in the wilderness of the Pennsylvania mountain country, west of Philadelphia, and concurrently, back through time in an examination of records, documents, personal and oral histories, and geographical relics. His search for what he suspects in the “true” self which he has kept hidden beneath the veneer of the competent academic leads him to a series of discoveries which enable him to grow toward a kind of maturity of completeness. The goal of his dual journey in space and time is to become a man who is capable of using every aspect of himself without the need to conceal weakness, to suppress emotion, or to maintain a hard edge of coldness to resist the harder edge of hate.

As the novel begins, Washington is summoned back into the country of his youth by the urgent message that “Old” Jack Crawley, one of the three men who reared him, and the only one still living, is near death in a cabin close to his old hometown. Jack Crawley and “Uncle” Josh (Snakebelly) White were his father’s best friends, and Washington does not feel ready to consider all the implications of the lives of these three men. Nevertheless, he knows that he cannot deny the claim of love and kinship that Jack makes, and he begins a voyage of return which carries him into the heart of the many mysteries that he has chosen to ignore. Essentially, his journey is a quest for knowledge; an attempt to understand the power and composed madness of his extraordinary father Moses Washington; to appreciate the endurance, determination, and resignation of his mother Yvette Franklin Stanton; to look clearly at the subtly interlocked white and black communities of his childhood; and finally, to understand the ways of the natural world, which he has never had to face in his artificially secure academic urbanity. As he uses the methods of the trained historian to uncover layer upon layer of “facts,” and then arrange these “facts” in a form that will reveal meaning, Washington gradually realizes the richness of his heritage. This becomes the true source of his strength as a man and enables him to cultivate qualities of character that will make it possible for him to share his life with the woman he is learning to love and to solve the mystery of his father’s suicide—to understand how it is connected to the eponymous “incident” which is the key to all the other mysteries in the novel.

The events of the novel take place between March 3 and March 12, 1979, but they actually encompass a time frame that covers almost 250 years as Washington travels, mentally and physically, back and forth between the mountains and the coast. His travels are set against a background of a developing late winter storm: In this trial by elemental force, the turmoil in the natural world parallels the chaotic strife-torn state of his psychic landscape, and to deal with both “storms,” he must demonstrate his ability to use not only his rational intelligence, which he has developed to the detriment of his other attributes, but also his instinctual and emotional powers, which have previously been dormant. By the end of the book, he has come to terms with those strengths of his father which he can share but never match and is reconciled to the ways of Moses Washington’s severe love which he has never understood. Also, he is ready to share every part of his inner life with Judith Powell, and in a sense, his level of maturity has gone beyond that of his father, who could never fully trust anyone, particularly a woman.

The Characters

John Washington is drawn by David Bradley as a contemporary black man who has been assaulted by all the forces of a racist society at its most vicious and yet has managed to survive without being turned into a cipher or a demon. Bradley’s first-person narrative places the reader close to Washington’s heart and directly in his mind. Perhaps in an attempt to reject forever the slander that black men are intellectually inferior, Washington’s intellect is especially impressive, and he has taken advantage of his educational opportunities to develop an analytical power that can penetrate the most complex conundrum or confidently confront any intellectual adversary. Because he fears that he will lose his mental discipline if he yields to his emotional impulses, he fails to understand the complete meaning of anything, although he has very ably covered this up, even to himself. At first, he seems distant, self-serving, and not very likable, but his sense of fairness, morality, and ultimate decency tend to compensate for his coldness. His intense interest in all of the things of the world and his dry sense of humor make him an interesting companion for a journey, and his tremendous desire to know and understand the circumstances of his life eventually overrides his limitations and carries the reader steadily closer to him (as Judith moves closer to him) as the narration progresses. By the time that John finally decides to sacrifice all his stratagems of defense and risk his soul to make it worthy, Bradley has carefully prepared the reader to share this experience with John and to rejoice at his success.

Still, the most interesting and bizarrely heroic character in the novel is John’s father, Moses Washington. “Mose,” in his son’s words, is an “ex-moonshiner and murderer who has taken up philosophy, eccentricity, church-cleaning, marriage and fatherhood as retirement avocations.” Bradley has created this character in a conscious effort to write into American literary history a black man who is unbreakable and in most endeavors unbeatable, who is a self-taught intellectual and a veritable poet of logic, who has the physical grace of an Olympic decathlon champion and a wicked gift for ghastly humor, which he directs at every form of villainy in American life. A victim of racism, he is not a racist himself, but he feels contempt for nearly everyone who is his inferior, regardless of race. He has a very stern sense of personal justice, which he delivers, in the absence of a social justice for most black people, with Old Testament severity. He is alive with passion but bereft of love, and although his exploits seem superhuman, it is Bradley’s achievement to have made them completely plausible. Moses dominates the novel and dominates his son until John finally unravels all the clues his father left—an educational legacy to make his son even stronger than he was, but in a new form for a future time. Moses’ suicide at the age of seventy is finally both a defeat and a symbol of the ultimate victory of a will that must control everything.

The other characters are dwarfed by comparison, but convincing. “Old” Jack is the last survivor of previous generations, the fabled storyteller of ancient cultures who is like the storehouse of collected wisdom of his tribe. “Uncle” Josh is a kind of natural man who would thrive in a fairer world but who is not cunning or clever enough for this one. John Washington’s mother is a woman who has recognized what she must do in order to accomplish her goals and has turned all her strength and intelligence to these ends. Part of Washington’s real education occurs as he learns that his contempt for her is misplaced and unearned, and that she has done admirably within the limits of the society to which she was tied. The mythic “C.K.” Washington, legendary leader of a band of liberated former slaves, is an example of what careful planning, calculated resistance, and an incredible sense of mission can accomplish. Judith Powell, John Washington’s best (possibly only) friend, is a straightforward woman whose complexity of character could easily justify a novel itself, but who functions here as a person of love, compassion, and common sense. She cares enough about Washington to stay with him through his mean times and believes enough in him to insist on accompanying him on his quest. His reluctance to accept her as a partner is overcome by her radiant spirit and her commitment to him (sometimes undeserved), and by his eventual realization that without her, he will forever be incomplete.

Critical Context

The Chaneysville Incident was David Bradley’s second novel. It was, as he notes in his acknowledgments, “ten years in the making.” It received the prestigious PEN/ Faulkner award as the finest novel of 1981 and, as various critics have claimed, it will take its place along with such books as Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) as a crucial part of American literary experience.

Bibliography

Bercovitch, Sacvan, ed. Reconstructing American Literary History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. Includes an essay by Robert B. Stepto, “Distrust of the Reader in Afro-American Narratives,” that emphasizes the importance of storytelling and the oral tradition with which Bradley works.

Byerman, Keith. Remembering the Past in Contemporary African American Fiction. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Study of the representation of history in African American fiction. Includes a chapter on history as reinvention and the intersection of familial and public memory in The Chaneysville Incident.

Callahan, John F. “Who We For? The Extended Call of African-American Fiction.” In In the African-American Grain: The Pursuit of Voice in Twentieth-Century Black Fiction. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Examines concepts of storytelling, the uses of history, and the central characters of The Chaneysville Incident.

Campbell, Jane. “Ancestral Quests.” In Mythic Black Fiction: The Transformation of History. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986. Compares Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977) and The Chaneysville Incident in terms of both books’ examination of the relationship between North American and West African culture. Concentrates on religion, the supernatural, and family histories.

Cooke, Michael G. “After Intimacy: The Search for New Meaning in Recent Black Fiction.” In Afro-American Literature in the Twentieth Century: The Achievement of Intimacy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984. Covers the specific use of symbolism in The Chaneysville Incident.

Leak, Jeffrey B. Racial Myths and Masculinity in African American Literature. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005. Each chapter compares a specific intersection of racial and gender myths in two novels. The final chapter discusses the “myth of cultural depravation” in The Chaneysville Incident and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977).

Rushdy, Ashraf H. A. Remembering Generations: Race and Family in Contemporary African American Fiction. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. An examination of novels, including Chaneysville Incident, set in modern times that attempt to deal with the “family secret”—slave owner as ancestor.