In Harlem are artists, thieves, junkies, prostitutes, and other lowlifes who take advantage of ordinary, honest folks trying to scrape together a living. Copyright © FreeBookNotes.com 2014-2020. eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. Essay Topics. O’Malley is running a scam on the gullible, to whom he promises free land and livestock back in Africa for one thousand dollars a family. The opening scene of this novel is explosive. A frantic chase ensues, scattering innocent bodies in its wake, but the getaway truck escapes, having dropped a bale of cotton that contains the money. A classic entry in Chester Himes’s trailblazing Harlem Detectives series, Cotton Comes to Harlem is one of his hardest-hitting and most entertaining thrillers.
© 2020 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Start your 48-hour free trial to unlock this Cotton Comes To Harlem study guide and get instant access to the following:. Upon his release, Himes returned to old habits: associating with dubious friends, remaining jobless, and smoking marijuana. The... Start your 48-hour free trial to unlock this Cotton Comes To Harlem study guide and get instant access to the following: You'll also get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and 300,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts.
In 1957, nearly broke, he connected with French actor-writer Marcel Duhamel, founder and editor of the publishing imprint Série Noire, who suggested that Himes write a pulp novel set in Harlem based on one simple principle: Start with action and keep up a blistering pace for more than two hundred pages. Cotton Comes To Harlem Themes. The author eschews a linear presentation, preferring instead a brisk cinematic format that cuts from scene to scene. (In fact, French critics refer to Himes as "the Balzac of Harlem" because of his ability to create vivid and memorable characters.) It reveals all Himes’s narrative strengths and achieves a surpassing excellence in use of language to create a society.
Multiple lines of inquiry spread out: the police want O’Hara, O’Hara wants the hijackers, the hijackers want to recover the lost bale, the common people want to recover the money they have invested.
He relies mainly on dialogue to advance the plot and keeps his descriptions and commentary to a bare minimum. Like his characters, obsessed with either committing crimes or catching criminals, Himes also seems obsessed, so that, as his French editor remarks in the preface to Blind Man with a Pistol (1969), the detective novels appear to have been written under intolerable pressure. Like Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Chandler, Himes has a terse, laconic style well suited to the description of violent action. As the police search for the robbers, who have shot one man and run over another in their flight,... Start your 48-hour free trial to unlock this Cotton Comes To Harlem study guide and get instant access to the following: You'll also get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and 300,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts.
A crowd of poor, religious black people in Harlem attend a Back-to-Africa rally, where Reverend Deke O’Malley promises to take them away from poverty and back to their homeland. Himes places his characters in a physical setting described economically, but with enough detail to convey the texture of daily life in Harlem. Sites with a book review or quick commentary on Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes.
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Himes relates the adventures of Grave Digger and Coffin Ed through a third-person, omniscient narrator who leaps about in time and space at breathtaking speed, increasing the sense of a world in chaos.
Cotton Comes to Harlem Summary.
), the resources below will generally offer Cotton Comes to Harlem chapter summaries, quotes, and analysis of themes, characters, and symbols. Ultimately, Harlem proves to possess its own self-generating and self-protective powers of restoration, which reside in the spirits of the black people who live there.
Our summaries and analyses are written by experts, and your questions are answered by real teachers. O'Malley, the direct cause of the suffering and violence resulting from his scheme, is black. The personality of the detective hero has always been central to the success of detective fiction, and in Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, Himes has created two of the most complex detectives in the genre. Cotton Comes to Harlem Characters Chester Himes This Study Guide consists of approximately 9 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Cotton Comes to Harlem. The characteristic tone is of acerbic humor bordering on the macabre, reinforcing the author's view that the often bizarre and violent behavior of his characters is only to be expected, given their absurd circumstances. The peace and festivity of the event is shattered when a gang of whites steals the $87,000 O’Malley has collected from the faithful and drives off in a stolen van. Among the summaries and analysis available for Cotton Comes to Harlem, there are 1 Full Study Guide, 1 Short Summary and 3 Book Reviews. Chapter 1 Summary. Small provider of short book summaries.
This Study Guide consists of approximately 9 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more -
In the novel, therefore, they are easily deceived by the Rev. On the way he is stopped by white police, who hassle him and ask if he has the $87,000.
Before he can capitalize on his plan, however, his movement is hijacked by a white gang in broad daylight. Many are victims of violence, yet instead of helping others, they commit horribly violent acts themselves.
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