Women
The novel is consumed with the issue of race. Not surprisingly, considering the author was an African-American writing in an American even more explicitly racist than it would be one hundred years on. What is especially interesting about the way it approaches the issue of race, however, is that comparison to whites are almost non-existent as this story is set in a milieu far removed from the white versus black milieu back in the states. As such, metaphor is put to use describing black characters absent the conventional experience of racist tension:
“The women of his race could throw laughter like a clap of thunder. And their style, the movement of their hips, was like that of fine, vigorous, four-footed animals. Latnah's was gliding like a serpent.”
Action Poetry
McKay more deep-seated comfort in verse which made him a figure in the Harlem Renaissance far more associated with poetry than novels shines throughout the story. With his intuitive grasp of imagery, he can find just the right metaphorical language to turn into even a simple street right into a portrait of intrigue:
“Suddenly in the thick joy of it there was a roar and a rush and sheering apart as a Senegalese leaped like a leopard bounding through the jazzers, and, gripping an antagonist, butted him clean on the forehead once, twice, and again, and turned him loose to fall heavily on the floor like a felled tree.”
Ray’s Schism
Not that racism is entirely absent in the novel. It just doesn’t really apply to Banjo who is the realization of instinct without intellectual blockage. Ray, on the other hand, not so much: he is the very portrait of the intellectual who may, at times, overthink the situation. Though certainly not without reason:
“In determining his action he must be mindful of his complexion. Always he was caught by the sharp afterthought of color, as If some devil's hand jerked a cord to which he was tethered in hell. Regular his emotions by a double standard.”
Mining for Narratives
Ray, the intellectual, is a writer. And Banjo gets along with him just fine because, well, that’s Banjo. Others, however, not so much. Such as Goosey, who confronts Ray’s writing over the issue of how white reader might view it and use it. To which Ray explains the nature of writing through metaphor:
“You see, Goosey, a good story, in spite of those who tell it and those who hear it, is like good ore that you might find in any soil—Europe, Asia, Africa, America. The world wants the ore and gets it by a thousand men scrambling and fighting, digging and dying for it. The world gets its story the same way.”
The Banjo
The opening line of the novel informs the reader that Banjo is the nickname of the character officially named Lincoln Agrippa Daily. He is called Banjo as a result of the instrument he plays, and that instrument to him is merely tool for producing music that is absent any sociological meaning or symbolism. His obliviousness to this aspect of the very thing which defines is soon enough cleared away by the metaphorical imagery of Goosey:
“Banjo is bondage. It's the instrument of slavery. Banjo is Dixie. The Dixie of the land of cotton and massa and missus and black mammy.”
