J.T. finds it difficult to ‘act decent’ around white people, as white people did not respect the blacks. So he does not feel he should go out of his way to respect the white men. You can tell this as in the story ‘J.T. declined to put on a shirt’ when the two white men knocked at the door.
Gracie Mae quickly forms an opinion about the deacon, from the moment she opens the door as she puts her ‘hand on the lock inside the screen’. She even goes on to comment on how his ‘hearty Southern way’ in which he speaks makes her ‘eyeballs ache’. She describes his eyes as being cold and grey and it is clear she is generally not at all impressed with the way he acts and physically appears. By including this into her story Alice Walker is highlighting the distrust black people felt for many of the whites.
When Traynor comes to visit Gracie Mae in 1968 he mistakes Horace for J.T. Gracie Mae corrects him but he still seems puzzled that he got it wrong. This shows that white people saw black people as all the same stereotyping them all into one category and did not regard them as individuals.
Yet another time when racial discrimination comes out is when both Gracie Mae and Traynor perform on the television programme. The fans greet Traynor with an enormous cheer but when Gracie Mae had sung the song before him the had merely clapped ‘politely for about two seconds’. This is all because she is black. Traynor feels bad about this and wants to comfort Gracie Mae but she is used to the way in which blacks get treated. Here Alice Walker is showing that white people were very much prejudice against blacks and that although both characters had performed in exactly the same manner Traynor still receives a louder response than Gracie Mae just for the fact of her skin colour.
When Traynor sings Gracie Mae’s song it is a roaring success, yet she is unable to make any money from it. This is because she is a black woman. However, although Traynor is able to make money from the song he never fully understands what it is about. This is because it has not come from his own thoughts and feelings. When Gracie Mae wrote the song it was all based on her own personal experiences in life, and so she could be the only one who would ever be able to relate fully to it. The basic moral that Alice Walker is trying to point out here is that you must live your own life and not that of someone else’s as that is like living a lie.
Traynor continually showers Gracie Mae with gifts, throughout his career and lifetime. I believe this is because he feels guilty. Guilty, that he has come to fame using her song and how she never managed to get people listening to her, just because of the colour of her skin. Gracie Mae writes letters to Traynor, while he is serving in the army at Germany. In one she mentions the car he brought her at Christmas and how she does ‘appreciate the mink and the new self-cleaning oven’ and that she had ‘more than enough of everything.’ These are just a couple of the many gifts brought for her through guilt.
I believe that both Traynor and Gracie Mae are equally powerful but for different reasons. Traynor has money and fame, which always make a person powerful, however he is not happy within himself. Gracie Mae might not have the money but she has a strong character and is happy with the life she lives. You can tell this by what they say and the reactions they make to life. Also she has some sort of hold over Traynor as he has copied her song, but does not know the meaning of it. Gracie Mae knows the answer, which he so desperately wants to know, so he can stop feeling guilty and simply be able to tell people what it means when they ask him. By including this, Alice Walker is again putting across the message that you should live your own life and not a lie, as Traynor did with Gracie Mae’s song ‘he had followed every turning of my voice, side streets, avenues, red lights, train crossings and all.’ He copied it exactly, he lived a lie. This is a metaphor on travel used so everyone can imagine the everyday image of traffic and compare it to Traynor’s copy of the song.
As I pointed out earlier the story is set over the same timespan as Elvis Presley’s career and the character Traynor is closely based on him. Gracie Mae is also based on a real life person but this time not quite as famous she is based on Willie Mae (Big Mama) Thornton. I have already said that both Traynor and Elvis had the black sound but there are other similarities as well. They were both drafted into the American army and went to serve in Germany also rumours suggested that both died as a result of drug abuse. Gracie Mae and Willie Mae Thornton both took the black community by storm with their songs, and both wrote songs for other people. By choosing to model her characters on these real personalities Alice Walker is trying to show the link the story has with reality at that time and the discrimination it caused.
Using the character Gracie Mae as the narrator of the story has a huge effect on the text. You see the whole story from a black woman’s opinion, which is rarely heard. It makes the story more personal as well having one of the characters as the narrator as you get to know their thoughts and feelings. Also by using Gracie Mae’s voice you get dialect and accent straight from the characters mouth almost. Examples of this are ‘with my foots up in J.T.’s lap.’ As well as ‘it’s better than no laugh a’tall.’ This use of grammar brings us much closer to the character of Gracie Mae, helping us to really understand what is going on in the story.
Gracie Mae is not at all like the black ‘mammy’ figure in literature and films. She had a strong personality and knows exactly what she wants and how to get it. Although she does have one quality of the stereotype, she tries to take everyone under her wing looking out for them and just making sure they stay focused to what they are doing. I think by doing this Alice Walker is trying to prove that not everyone fits into a category or stereotype.
During the last three lines of the story Gracie Mae says ‘ But I didn’t want to see ‘em. They was crying and crying and didn’t even know what they was crying for. One day this is going to be a pitiful country, I thought.’ I think this means that she feels pity for them because they feel emotion but they do not know why they are feeling it, she also feels that in time the whole of the country will be like this with everybody’s lives. This also shows that the exploitation of another race’s genius will lead to emptiness and lack of fulfilment.
So to answer the question what message do I think Alice Walker is trying to convey in Nineteen fifty-five is extremely difficult as you can see she manages to include so many views and points in such a short piece of text. However some of the main ones are not to live a lie, racial prejudice and how it is wrong, but finally most important of all every one no matter what differences race, sex or anything else should be treated equal.
By Nicole Faulks
