Joe Turner's Come and Gone

“My daddy called me to him. Said he had been thinking about me and it grieved him to see me in the world carrying other people’s songs and not having one of my own. Told me he was going to show me how to find my song.” 

This quote from Bynum’s vision introduces song as a metaphor for identity and establishes the importance of constructing a distinct sense of self. The African-American search for identity is one of the central themes of the play,

“Oh he showed me all right. But you still got to figure it out. Can’t nobody figure it out for you. You got to come to it on your own.”

Bynum is telling Selig what he learned from the shiny man about the secret of life, which is that each person has to work to establish their own identity because no one else can do that for them.

“Then both of you be lost and trapped outside of life and ain’t no way for you to get back into it. ‘Cause you lost from yourselves and where the places come together, where you’re supposed to be alive, your heart kicking in your chest with a song worth singing.” 

Bynum is telling Mattie the risks of binding her to the man who left her if he isn’t supposed to come back. He explains to her that being stuck in an unhappy relationshipwill bring her more misery instead of the happiness of love that she is looking for.

“I just can’t go through life piecing myself out to different mens. I need a man who wants to stay with me.” 

Mattie says this to Jeremy in response to his overtures, trying to explain the personal cost to her of taking up with a man who doesn’t want to be tied down, that she is losing bits of herself along the way. She then takes up with him anyway.

“Now that’s the truth of Rutherford Selig. This old People Finding business is for the birds. He ain’t never found nobody he ain’t took away. Herald Loomis, you just wasted your dollar.” 

Here, Bertha tells Bynum and Loomis that Selig is running a scam by charging to locate people he transported in his wagon, so he already knows where they are, and is therefore taking advantage of Loomis and anyone else who pays him.

“What he gonna do after he put in that road? He can’t do nothing but go put down another one somewhere. Now, if he let me show him how to make some pots and pans…then he’d have something can’t nobody take from him. After awhile he could get his own tools and go off somewhere and make his own pots and pans.” 

Seth, worried about Jeremy’s future as an unskilled worker, is suggesting to Bertha that he could teach Jeremy metalworking as his father taught him. Seth is taking a rather unusual paternal stance and looking to pass on his legacy from his father to improve Jeremy’s prospects in the world.

“I ain’t that big a fool. That’s all I got. Sign it over to them and then I won’t have nothing.” 

Seth explains to Bynum that the white man he sought a business loan from asked for his house as collateral, a risk that Seth is too wise to accept. Seth is demonstrating his understanding of discriminatory and exploitative loan practices, as well as his determination to maintain his stability.

“But you got to learn it. My telling you ain’t gonna mean nothing. You got to learn how to come to your own time and place with a woman.” 

Bynum cautions Jeremy not to trifle with Mattie and tries to educate him on the importance of finding and keeping the right woman. He realizes, however, that ultimately Jeremy will have to figure this out for himself.

“Go on out there and make some pots and pans. That’s the only time you satisfied is when you out there. Go on out there and make some pots and pans and leave them people alone.” 

Bertha is chasing Seth out of the kitchen to stop bothering the tenants after he confronts Loomis about his behavior the previous night. Bertha observes that he is much happier working with his hands to make something out of metal thandealing with people.

“I don’t trust none of these men. Jack or nobody else. These men liable to do anything. They just wait until they get one woman tied and locked up with them…then they look and see if they can get another one.” 

Molly is talking to Mattie about her view of men. Like Mattie, she has also been abandoned by a man she loved and, as a result, claims not to trust any man. Her observation both foreshadows and contradicts what she does next, which is to run off with Jeremy.

“I go out there…take these hands and make something out of nothing. Take that metal and bend and twist it whatever way I want. My daddy taught me that. He used to make pots and pans. That’s how I learned it.” 

Seth is describing to Molly, with evident pride, his metalworking skill, a legacy from his father and an important aspect of his identity.

“It didn’t make no sense to me. I don’t make but eight dollars. Why I got to give him fifty cents of it? He go around to all the colored and he got ten dollars extra. That’s more than I make for the whole week.”

Jeremy describes to Seth his first encounter with discriminatory employment practices. Jeremy calculates that the white man makes more by exploiting the workers than he earns in a week, and refuses to pay, thereby losing his job. 

“I see you gonna learn the hard way. You just looking at the facts of it. See, right now without the job, you ain’t got nothing. What you gonna do when you can’t keep a roof over your head?” 

Seth, acknowledging that Jeremy is going to have to learn through experience, urges Jeremy to focus on the practical aspect of his employment situation, earning money rather than dwelling on what happened. He wants Jeremy to think through the consequences of having no income.

“There’s a big road out there. I can get my guitar and always find me another place to stay. I ain’t planning on staying in one place for too long noway.” 

Jeremy chooses to disregard Seth’s practical advice to focus on earning money, deciding, perhaps naively, to take his guitar and go back on the road, rationalizing that he wasn’t planning on remaining there anyway.

“I don’t want to miss nothing. I wanna go everywhere and do everything there is to be got out of life. With a woman like you it’s like having water and berries. A man got everything he need.” 

To persuade Molly to join him on the road, Jeremy quotes from Bynum’s advice on how to treat a woman. Apparently, he took some of Bynum’s advice to heart.

“See, you looking for this woman. I’m looking for a shiny man. Seem like everybody looking for something.” 

After Loomis’ negative reaction to hearing the song “Joe Turner,” Bynum tries to draw him out in a conversation by stressing that they share a common experience of searching, and in fact, nearly all the characters in the play are searching for something.

“I ain’t never picked no cotton. I was born up here in the North. My daddy was a freedman. I ain’t never seen no cotton!” 

Bynum, from the South himself, assumes that picking cotton is a universal experience and Seth reminds him that he has a different heritage. As the son of a Northern free man, Seth has never been near a cotton field, an experience that separates him the children of slaves.

“See Mr. Loomis, when a man forgets his song he goes off in search of it…till he find out he’s got it with him all the time. That’s why I can tell you one of Joe Turner’s…‘Cause you forgot how to sing your song.” 

Bynum is telling Loomis how his broken identity exposed him as a victim of Joe Turner. He is also trying to explain to Loomis that what he really needs is to find himself, remember his song, rather than find someone else.  

“That’s been going on four years now we been looking. That’s the only thing I know how to do. I just wanna see her face so I can get me a starting place in the world. The world got to start somewhere. That’s what I been looking for.” 

Loomis is describing to Bynum his life since Joe Turner let him go. He returned home to find that Martha had left their daughter with her mother and headed north. Loomis took Zonia and has been searching obsessively for his wife ever since, unable to resume any semblance of a life without her. 

“I done seen all kind of men. I done seen then come and go through here. Jeremy ain’t had enough to him for you. You need a man who’s got some understanding and who willing to work with that understanding to come to the best he can. You got your time coming.” 

Bertha is consoling Mattie after Jeremy takes off with Molly. She shares the wisdom she has garnered from studying her boarders for many years. She is counseling Molly to be patient and wait for a man who is worthy and deserving of her, instead of settling for one like Jeremy.

“You gonna look up one day and find everything you want standing right in front of you. Been twenty-seven years now since that happened to me.” 

While encouraging Mattie that she will eventually find the right man, Bertha is also describing how she met Seth and their resultinglong and happy relationship.  

“I ain’t never found no place for me to fit in. Seem like all I do is start over. It ain’t nothing to find no starting place in the world. You just start from where you find yourself.”

Mattie is trying to encourage Loomis by telling him that she hasn’t found her place in the world yet either, and that starting over isn’t as difficult as he might think, based on her experience doing it.

“That’s all you need in the world is love and laughter. That’s all anybody needs. To have love in one hand and laughter in the other.” 

After noticing Mattie’s beneficial effect on Loomis, Bertha determines that he just needs someone to make him laugh, which is what everyone needs in the world. This is Bertha’s secret of life.