.jpg.webp) Bantam Books paperback edition | |
| Author | William Melvin Kelley |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Publisher | Bantam Books |
Publication date | 1964 |
| Pages | 182 |
| ISBN | 9780385413909 |
A Different Drummer is the 1962 debut novel of William Melvin Kelley. It won the John Hay Whitney Foundation Award and Rosenthal Foundation Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.[1] The title references Henry David Thoreau's lines: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer...".[2][3]
Set in the late 1950s in an imaginary Southern state located between Mississippi and Alabama, a young black farmer named Tucker Caliban sets fire to his house and farm and kills all of his livestock. He leaves with his pregnant wife as the beginning of an exodus of the African-American population from the state.
Tucker Caliban does not speak much throughout the novel, as a majority of the knowledge the reader gains of him comes from the perspective of the white townspeople, as a symbol of the overall South in which slavery was spread.
Author
William Melvin Kelley was born on November 1, 1937 in New York City to William Melvin Kelley, Sr. and Narcissa Agatha Kelley. His father was the editor of a Harlem-based African American newspaper, Amsterdam News, but he grew up in the North Bronx, a primarily Italian-American community.
Kelley was schooled privately and graduated from Fieldston in 1957, and went on to attend Harvard University. While he originally planned to study law, he took writing courses with John Hawkes and Archibald MacLeish and took the arts more to his liking. In 1960, he was awarded the Dana Reed Prize for creative writing, but soon thereafter dropped out of Harvard.
Kelley was a writer in residence at the State University of New York Geneseo and taught at both the New School for Social Research and Sarah Lawrence College, as well as writing in freelance. He was awarded with fellowships to the New York Writers' Conference and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, as well as receiving the John Hay Whitney Foundation Award and the Rosenthal Foundation Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters for A Different Drummer.
Plot summary
Chapters 1-4
The early chapters of A Different Drummer introduce the early history of the Willson family and a more recent history of the imaginary southern state itself. Though imaginary, the state represents the Deep South as a whole dating back to the slavery era. Confederate General Willson is introduced, noted for his success in resisting Northern forces in the Civil War.
"The African" is then introduced in chapter 2, who is a legend told to resist slavery in ancestral times. The legend states that the two giants of the African and General Willson battled over time as a symbol of racial conflict, and General Willson slays him and keeps his son, who becomes the first Caliban. The novel then fast forwards to the present day in chapter 3, when Harry Leland is introduced. Harry stands by raising his son in a different way so he is aware of the inequality between races and creates a possible change in the South. A key moment is when his son, Mister Leland, uses derogatory language and it is a chance for Harry to lecture him and inform him that he will need to get along with "all kinds of people".
In chapter 4, Mister Leland recalls a time when Tucker buys him a bag of peanuts and he has an interaction with him that he determines to make them friends. This is when he begins to understand why Tucker did what he did. However, when Mister Leland has a conversation with Bradshaw, he is unable to recount the story until Bradshaw talks to him in a way that Mister is "more used to hearing from black people".
Chapters 5-8
Chapter 5 is a shorter, flashback chapter that focuses on Dewey Willson's birthday when he received a bike. He asks Tucker to teach him, but when they return late for dinner Tucker is punished which allows Dewey to learn at a young age the difference in race relations. Because of this flashback, chapter 6 begins to focus on the historical relationship between the Willsons and the Calibans. Dewey returns home from college and receives a letter from Tucker explaining his psychological side of the day recounted in the flashback and Dewey cannot understand why Tucker felt humiliated. Tucker requests the bike from Dewey to destroy it like he did with his farm, but he does not get it. Chapter 7 goes into the relationship between Bethrah Caliban and Dymphna Willson, and Bethrah's beginning to work for her. They become friends, and Bethrah asks for an introduction to Tucker, which leads to their marriage and the birth of their child.
Chapter 8 begins with a nightmare that Dewey has where Union and Confederate soldiers are both dying, but the Union soldiers are reborn from their pools of blood. In this same nightmare, General Willson throws Dewey Willson his head but Dewey is unable to save himself, and the nightmare represented the fear and guilt Dewey feels.
Chapters 9-11
Chapters 9 and 10 complement each other as they are each one half of the marriage between Camille and David Willson. Camille talks about the early days of their marriage and how they met at Harvard, but eventually moved back to the South. David did not speak much as he supported reforming the South and became uncomfortable with letters he received from New York asking him to work. Camille describes how lonely she feels in the house as there is nobody for her to talk to, but one day she talks to Tucker with an analogy. She compares herself to a prince and princess and asks Tucker what she should do, and he suggests that she stay because one day the prince will become himself again.
David's chapter focuses on the sad story of him being a liberal fighting unsuccessfully to change his family's heritage. He uses his diary to tell stories of his upbringing, beginning with May 31, 1957 on the day Tucker destroyed his farm; then flashing back to 1931 when he entered Harvard and meets Bennett Bradshaw, a black man, and befriends him.
The final chapter of A Different Drummer summarizes the whole novel and the result it has in the present, noting the black families leaving the state. Stewart joins the men on the porch with a bag of liquor and Bobby-Joe decides Bradshaw is responsible for the exodus of the blacks from this state. When he sees Bradshaw's car, he stops it and the men accuse him of instigating. The final scene of the novel is when Mister Leland wakes up to the sound of Bradshaw being lynched, and he takes the sounds of laughing and singing to be a party, although it is murder. [4]
Characters
Tucker Caliban - Tucker is the protagonist and the descendant of an African chief brought to America in chains who refused slavery. He does not speak much, but rather his story is told through the perspectives of the other characters.
Camille Willson - Camille Willson is David Willson's wife who seems to be unaware of the injustice of the southern racial system until close to the end of the novel.
David Willson - David Willson is a more liberal character working against the ideals of the South due to his education at Harvard and his befriending of Bennett Bradshaw. However, once he moved back to the South, his ideals were compromised and he could no longer work for justice.
Dymphna Willson - Dymphna Willson befriended Bethrah Caliban, Tucker's wife, as she worked in her house. Because of this, she had slightly more understanding of Tucker's actions.
Harry Leland - Harry Leland keeps the reader in perspective when Tucker destroys his property. He is the one man in the group on the porch that realizes the racial injustices the black families have experienced and he is willing to do something about it which is why he raises his son differently.
Mister Leland - Mister Leland is the eight-year-old son of Harry Leland and he is being taught to reconcile the changes in the South, and he is essentially the chance the South has to make changes to the status quo.
Dewey Willson - Dewey Willson grew up with Tucker and they played together, but he never understood Tucker's psychological make up. He is oblivious to the struggle they go through and cannot understand the hardship of racial culture throughout history.
Major themes
Individuality
Coming from the title alone, the theme of individuality is ever present in A Different Drummer and comes from the philosopher Henry David Thoreau and his work, Walden (1854), "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away". The importance of self-reliance and the role of an individual come from this excerpt from Thoreau relating to several characters in this novel.
The African is the first and strongest individual who "hears a different drummer". As he refuses slavery after being brought to the states on a slave ship, and continues to flee from General Willson until he is finally killed, the African did everything in his power to stay individually pure and not succumb to slavery. As he was facing General Dewey before he was killed, the African even tried to kill his infant son to prevent him from being brought into slavery before he could grow up. Tucker Caliban is another prime example of the theme of individuality in A Different Drummer, as he destroys his own farm, kills his own livestock, and burns down his own house to separate himself from the ancestral history of slavery his family has been through. He also destroyed the grandfather clock that came on the same ship as the African, as it was another historical piece that tied him to slavery. However, there was one item Tucker was unable to destroy; Dewey Willson's bicycle. The fact that he was unable to destroy this bicycle is symbolic of the fact that African Americans even today are still tied to their ancestral histories and it will always be a part of families in the future. Tucker's argument is that the quest for freedom is the individual's responsibility if they want to achieve true freedom, which is why it relates to the idea of self reliance and why it relates to Walden. Finally, Mister Leland is an example of a figure that follows the theme of individuality in the novel. Mister Leland is a young boy and the son of Harry Leland, and Harry Leland is trying to raise him in a way that he changes the traditions of the South. Mister Leland grows in this way to the point where he is not racist or discriminatory in the same way southern white men historically have been, which separates him and makes him individualistic from society.
White Societal Dominance
Perhaps the even bigger theme in A Different Drummer comes from the way it is written. Every chapter is the perspective of either one or multiple townsfolk, all of whom are white. William Melvin Kelley intentionally leaves out most of Tucker Caliban's dialogue because it provides a mystery surrounding him in which the reader does not get a full grasp of who he is. However, by not giving Tucker more dialogue, Kelley also displays the silence that black people in the south experienced in this time.
By only providing the white townsfolk with dialogue in this novel, it is a representation of how everything was dictated by the white families and how every interaction became one sided. Tucker's lack of dialogue also provides his intention in that actions are far more important than words; although Tucker Caliban does not say much in the novel, his actions have created a mass revolutionary exodus in which all of the black families disconnect themselves from the racial histories and leave Sutton. This concept also works the other way, as the white families are the ones speaking throughout the entire novel and yet their goals are failures. Tucker understands by not saying anything that his strength is purely self-generated and is a result of making decisions and thinking through things himself rather than the alliances the Willsons and Lelands have formed or certain civil rights organizations that he has denied participation in. Finally, another result of Tucker's lack of dialogue is the awareness he has provided to other black families. By not speaking, he has made these other black families aware of the racial pervasiveness that the black families have in the white society and that it is a realistic possibility for them to leave and escape their metaphorical bondage to a new beginning.
Critical reception
The novel serves as a means of educating the present day about the cultural difficulties in the 1950s and 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement and how the historical racism of the South lived for many years past the end of the Civil War. The critical reception of Tucker Caliban has proven to be the understanding that he is a representation of the only real way that African American families will separate themselves from the slavery history of the South; through their own individuality and self-reliance, and separating themselves from the dark history rather than relying on someone else to do so.
The reception of A Different Drummer also came with comparisons to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. [5]Audiences received these two novels with many parallels, starting with the perspective of the "white eye". As A Different Drummer is written by the account of white characters for the entire novel, To Kill a Mockingbird is similar in that it is "exclusively through Caucasian eyes". Because of this, both of these authors display the white privilege they are trying to make the audience aware of, which they are very effective in doing so. However, reader's have received A Different Drummer to be quite the opposite of the Civil Rights Movement's goals or for example, Martin Luther King's nonviolent movement. Tucker's detestation and denial of supporting any civil rights groups and his actions in destroying black history, essentially, provide a new means of fighting the white racism and separating himself from the "bondage" that is being represented. The novel was controversial in this sense as some readers believe this promoted violence, although Kelley was focused more on the symbolic impact of destroying various items. Instead of the purpose of destruction being to incite violence, it is rather Tucker's symbolic means of disconnecting himself from every connection he has to slavery so that he can release all bondage. However, also symbolic to today's world, there is one item Tucker could not destroy which is representative of the connection to ancestral history that African Americans still feel today.
References
- ↑ Nelson, Emmanuel Sampath, Contemporary African American Novelists, ISBN 0313305013, 1999: "William Melvin Kelley has been a writer in residence at the State University of New York at Geneseo and has taught at the New School for Social Research. He has also been a freelance writer. He won fellowships to the New York Writers' Conference and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference as well as receiving the John Hay Whitney Foundation Award and Rosenthal Foundation Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters for his first novel, A Different Drummer."
- ↑ Andrews, William L., African American Literature: Voices in a Tradition, 1992, p. 519. ISBN 0030474248. About the Author William Melvin Kelley (b. 1937): "Early in his career, William Melvin Kelley wrote: 'I am not a sociologist or a politician or a spokesman. Such people try to give answers. A writer, I think, should ask questions. He should depict people, not symbols or ideas disguised ...' Kelley's first novel, A Different Drummer, was published in 1962, when he was twenty-five. The title emphasizes the importance of individuality in Kelley's work. It comes from the famous lines of Henry David Thoreau: 'If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer...'."
- ↑ Hughes, Sarah (October 27, 2018). "Lost literary masterpiece of 1960s black America comes to UK". The Guardian. Retrieved October 27, 2018.
- ↑ Gallagher, Mark (2021-08-31), "Live Deliberately, Stay Woke: Thoreau's Influence on William Melvin Kelley", Thoreau in an Age of Crisis, Brill | Fink, pp. 181–198, ISBN 978-3-7705-6545-0, retrieved 2023-12-05
- ↑ Sargent, Andrew (2018). "To Counter a Mockingbird: Black Sacrifice, White Heroism, and Racial Innocence in William Melvin Kelley's A Different Drummer". African American Review. 51 (1): 37–54. doi:10.1353/afa.2018.0003. ISSN 1945-6182.