Les Blancs (5 page)

Named for the Negro slave song which contained a coded message of escape,
The Drinking Gourd
is an incisive analysis and indictment of American slavery as a self-perpetuating system based on the exploitation of cheap labor. More than a historical piece, this provocative work identifies the slave system as the basis for the country’s economic philosophy and later capitalistic development; it dramatizes the devastating psychological and physical impact of the slave institution on both master and slave. As in
A Raisin in the Sun
, the message is not delivered in a heavy-handed manner, but is derived from the characters and actions of the drama.

Three distinct classes of people are a part of this world of slavery: the master, the slave, and the poor white. During the course of the play, set at the beginning of the Civil War, the impact of the slave system on each class is starkly portrayed, with each becoming a victim of its economic realities. Hiram Sweet is the ailing master of a slave plantation which is losing money, in part because Hiram’s relatively humane policies do not produce enough to compete favorably with larger, less “liberal” plantations. The slave Hannibal, son of Rissa, who is Hiram’s confidante, is contemptuous of his situation and is preparing to escape. Zeb, a poor white farmer, finds that he is being squeezed out by the larger plantations and so agrees to become an overseer on Hiram’s land—against the advice of his friend.

Although Hiram is sensitive enough to be uneasy about the morality of slavery, he is not perceptive enough to recognize his ultimate powerlessness as a master. In an angry speech justifying a special favor he is granting to Rissa’s son, Hiram says to his wife: “I am master of this plantation and every soul on it.… I am master of
this house as well.… There are some men born into this world who make their own destiny. Men who do not tolerate the rules of other men or other forces.”

However, as Hiram’s health fails, the control of the plantation is taken over by his immature, simpleminded son, Everett. The opposite of his father, Everett runs the plantation with a harsh hand, hiring Zeb to enforce his new policies. When Everett discovers that Hannibal has learned to read, he orders Zeb to carry out a brutal punishment—to put out Hannibal’s eyes. The blinding of Hannibal shatters the illusion that slavery can be redeemed from its moral bankruptcy. The master cannot protect the son of a woman for whom he cares; the slave’s friendship with the master cannot prevent a human catastrophe; and the poor white farmer cannot maintain any semblance of self-respect and humanity while being an overseer. The disease of the slave institution infects them all.

Each character succumbs to the economic realities of an exploitative system gone wild. Hansberry drives her point home in a climactic moment near the end of the play. The dying Hiram goes to Rissa’s cabin in the slave quarters where she is caring for her blinded son, and says:

Rissa, angry and embittered, looks up at him and says: “Why ain’t you Marster? How can a man be marster of some men and not at all of others.… ” She turns away from him and continues tending to her son. A dejected, defeated man, Hiram leaves the cabin. Weak from his illness, he falls in the dirt outside of the cabin. Rissa, ignoring his cries for help, closes the door on him as he dies near her doorstep.

Hiram’s death marks the demise of this world, but Hansberry intimates that the insidious effects of slavery will be far-reaching. In the final words of the play, the Soldier/Narrator says:

Although Hansberry remains faithful to the parameters of the historical period, she argues that America will continue to pay a high price for its adoption of a slave economy.

The controversy which this drama sparked in the executive chambers of NBC can be attributed to the myths which Hansberry attacks in this play. She dares to place in the mouth of a black woman slave the words which destroy the genteel illusion of a humane and necessary, though peculiar, institution. She also permits this woman to choose, consciously and without ambivalence, the well-being of her son over the needs of her dying master—an act which belies the dearly held stereotype of the faithful, self-deprecating servant. Hansberry also uses the play as an occasion to debate basic notions that slaves were happy, compliant, and loyal, and that the institution of slavery was not a primary issue in the Civil War.

Although the play has never stood the test of performance, the script is tight and utilizes the short, intimate scenes characteristic of effective television drama. Hansberry had a sure sense for this medium and, had the play been produced, she would have moved the electronic medium closer to maturity.

In late 1961,
What Use Are Flowers?
was conceived as a fantasy for television, in response to contemporary debates about the destruction or survival of the human race. After her experience with
The Drinking Gourd
, Hansberry began to reconceptualize the play for the stage, but never lived to complete the idea. What survives is the draft of a short play about a hermit who returns from a self-imposed exile to find wild children orphaned by a nuclear holocaust. As he decides to civilize the children and chooses those aspects of civilization worthy of repeating and necessary to their spiritual and intellectual
growth, the audience gains a fascinating insight into the priorities of our Western culture.

Hansberry has a talent for asking the evocative question which goes to the heart of the matter. After teaching the children the meaning of such words as clay, pot, and sun, the Hermit attempts to explain the importance of beauty, using a bouquet of flowers as an example. One of the children asks, “What use are flowers?” and the Hermit is momentarily stymied in his effort to explain this intangible but crucial aspect of a civilized and humanistic view. He finally answers that the uses of flowers are infinite. In that exchange is the crux of the play: the Hermit’s real challenge is to teach these preliterates to control and overcome their habit of violence so that they can learn the uses of love and compassion, cornerstones of civilization.

Fantasy is an apt term for this play because it lacks the specificity of cultural reference points which is a hallmark of Hansberry’s work. However much one misses the richness, which is typical of her plays, the dramatic situation warrants the treatment of human actions in a more or less abstracted form.

In 1980, 1982, and 1994, I directed readings of this script at workshops for college professors and administrators. With the threat of nuclear disaster ever present in a post-Cold War era, the devastation described by this play was no idle fantasy or forgotten fear from the past. Because the title question “What use are flowers?” haunts our technological age, this select audience perceived and laughed at its own pretensions, mirrored as they were in the posturings and genuine confusion of the Hermit. Ultimately, the play offers all of us an excellent means of examining what we choose to teach and what we choose to learn. A full production of
What Use Are Flowers?
premiered at the 1994 National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta, Georgia, under the direction of Harold Scott.

Les Blancs
was a consuming labor of love for Hansberry. Throughout her last year and a half of life, even while
Sign
struggled toward production, she worked at
Les Blancs
, carrying it in and out of hospitals, writing and rewriting, polishing and refining. Two years earlier, a scene from the draft work had been staged for the Actors Studio Writers’ Workshop, and Hansberry had been encouraged by its reception. Robert Nemiroff acted as her sounding-board-advocate-critic
as she sought what he describes in this volume as a structure “flexible enough to contain and focus the complexity of personalities, social forces and ideas in this world she had created.” After many discussions with him and others, she broke through and outlined the major structural and character developments she wanted. After her death, Nemiroff tells us he continued the work, “synthesizing the scenes already completed throughout the play with those in progress, drawing upon relevant fragments from earlier drafts and creating, as needed, dialogue of my own to bridge gaps, deepen relationships, or tighten the drama along the lines we had explored together.”

The result of this collaborative effort is a remarkable play which asks an urgent question of the twentieth century: Can the liberation of oppressed peoples be achieved without violent revolution?
Les Blancs
is the first major work by a black American playwright to focus on Africa and to pose this question in the context of an African liberation struggle.

Tshembe Matoseh, a black African, has returned to his homeland for his father’s funeral. During his visit, he is caught up in his country’s struggle to oust the white colonialists after many years of peaceful efforts to negotiate their freedom. His family’s tribe urges him to lead the violent struggle, while his older brother, Abioseh, who has converted to the Catholic priesthood, abhors the native effort and in fact betrays one of the leaders to the local police. Tshembe’s dilemma is classic; the parallels to Hamlet are obvious. But Hansberry, instinctively recognizing the inappropriateness of relying only on a Western literary reference point, provides Tshembe with another metaphor—from African lore: Modingo, the wise hyena who lived between the lands of the elephants and the hyenas. Ntali, one of the African insurgents, explains to Tshembe in an effort to engage him in their struggle. Modingo was asked by the hyenas, the earliest inhabitants of the jungle, to settle their territorial quarrel with the elephants who want more space because of their size. Modingo, whose name means “One Who Thinks Carefully Before He Acts,” understands the arguments offered by both and refuses to join either side until he has thought on the matter. While he thinks, the hyenas wait—too long, because the elephants move in and drive the hyenas from the jungle altogether. “That is why the hyena laughs until this
day and why it is such terrible laughter: because it was such a bitter joke that was played upon them while they ‘reasoned.’ ”

Hansberry does not shrink from the controversy and desperation implicit in this theme; she does not simplify the situation, as a less courageous playwright might. The question, which is debated from all sides, is complicated by the presence of white characters of good will, kind intent, and proven loyalty. There is the original sin of the whites who raped, pillaged, and colonized the country. Is their guilt expiated by the Christian missionaries and others of good will who build clinics and treat the sick? And what of those missionaries who build substandard clinics in the bush and refuse to use even those modern tools and technology that are available to them? Hansberry interrogates all of her characters in
Les Blancs
, even the “enlightened” Charlie Morris, the American journalist who wants to understand. Do the years of suffering torture, indignities, and enslavement at the hands of white settlers justify the brutal murder of men, and “innocent” women and children, by the victims of colonialism? Charlie smugly reaches for easy answers, while Tshembe ruthlessly grapples with the pain and complexity of truth. When Charlie tries to reduce Tshembe’s views by accusing him of hating all white men, Tshembe laughs:

When Charlie tries to retreat into that other facile myth which declares race as unimportant because all men are alike under the skin, Tshembe patiently demolishes the innocuous generalization. Through the eloquent words of this character, Hansberry unmasks the myth of race and turns it on its head, showing
the political struggles of this century in a new light. As Tshembe says: