Blood on the Forge is a migration novel by the African-American writer William Attaway set in the steel valley of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during 1919, a time when vast numbers of Black Americans moved northward. Attaway's own family was part of this population shift from South to North when he was a child.
His novel follows the Moss brothers as they escape the inequality of sharecropping in the South only to encounter inequality in the mills of the North. Their story illustrates the tragedy and hardships many Black Americans faced during the Great Migration. Blood on the Forge touches on themes such as the destruction of nature, the emptiness and hunger that the working characters experience, the complications of the individual in a depersonalized world, and the myth of the American Dream.
Background During his childhood in the 1910s, author William Attaway traveled with his family from the segregated south of Mississippi to the northern city of Chicago; in doing so his family became part of what would be known as the Great Migration.Bader, Philipo. (2004). Attaway, William. African-American Writers. Infobase Publishing. . pp. 7–8.Bland, Sterling Lecater. (2004). "Fire and Romance: African American Literature". In Josephine Hendin (Ed.), A Concise Companion to Postwar American Literature and Culture (p. 267). John Wiley & Sons. . From 1910 to 1930, approximately six million African Americans moved from the rural southern United States to the industrialized North. The northern states of Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, New York and Michigan received the majority of the migrating African Americans. Factors motivating blacks to migrate north included the plentiful job opportunities in Northern industry, and the desire to escape the harsh racial climate of the South. As a result, neighborhoods in Northern cities saw drastic changes in population and an increase in issues concerning housing. Many cultural movements were spawned due to the large influx in black populations in the North, including the Harlem Renaissance and the spread of jazz music.Reich, Steven Andrew (2006). Encyclopedia of the great Black migration p. 617 Greenwood Press. .
Plot summary Part One The novel opens in Kentucky, in the year 1919; sharecropping half-brothers Big Mat, Chinatown, and Melody Moss are in dire straits. After their mule dragged their mother to her death, Big Mat killed the animal in a fit of rage. Now without a mule, the brothers are unable to work their land, and are likely to starve. The landowner, Mr. Johnston, agrees to give the brothers another mule.
When Big Mat goes to Mr. Johnston's riding boss to collect the mule he had been promised, the riding boss refuses to give him the mule, and makes a racist comment about the departed Mrs. Moss. Big Mat's anger again overcomes him and he attacks and possibly kills the riding boss. Earlier that day, Chinatown and Melody are visited by a white man on horseback who gives them a ten-dollar bill, promising much more if the brothers leave that night on a train that would take them North, to work. When Big Mat returns that evening and Melody and Chinatown tell him what the stranger said, Big Mat decides that he and his brothers will head North that very evening.
Part Two Part Two, the shortest of the novel, chronicles the inhumane conditions of the train in which the Moss brothers are shipped north to Pennsylvania.
Part Three The Moss brothers arrive at a mill town near Pittsburgh, where they get work in the steel mill and live together in a bunkhouse with the other workers of the mill. On their time off, Chinatown and Melody go to a Mexican madam named Sugar Mama, where they meet her niece Anna, whom Melody becomes infatuated with.
Chinatown and Melody convince Big Mat to come with them to a dog fight. When Anna rushes into the ring to prevent the death of one of the dogs, she is hit by the dog's owner. Big Mat responds by punching the man, which leads to a riot. After the fight breaks up, Anna rushes up to Big Mat and kisses him before running away again.
Big Mat takes Anna away from Sugar Mamma and sets up house with her in a small shack. Melody brings a letter from Big Mat's wife Hattie to the shack only to find Anna there alone. When he tells Anna about the letter she tries to snatch it from him; the two wrestle over the letter. The struggle culminates in Melody raping Anna.
There is a catastrophic accident at the mill that kills 14 men and blinds Chinatown. After this tragedy, the labor union becomes very active and gains many new members. The atmosphere of the town becomes increasingly hostile as the foreign mill workers come to resent the African American workers, who are the only group that refuse to join the union.
Big Mat is recruited by the sheriff, who is impressed with Big Mat's strength, to be a deputy and help combat the growing union. Once deputized, Mat is told that he is a boss in the town; after a lifetime of oppression, this new feeling of authority goes to Big Mat's head.
Melody decides to cheer Chinatown up after his accident by taking him to visit some prostitutes. Once at the brothel, Melody finds out that Anna has been working there. Melody returns home and tries to convince Anna to run away with him. When Big Mat overhears them, he once again is overpowered by his rage and beats Anna with his brass-studded belt.
Later that night Big Mat, along with the sheriff and his deputies, raid the union headquarters. In the midst of the action, Big Mat is repeatedly hit on the back of the head with a pickaxe handle by a young Slavic union member. Big Mat is killed by the blows.
The book ends with Melody and Chinatown leaving the mill town as they take a train to Pittsburgh, where they plan to rebuild their lives.
Genre
Proletarian literature
Blood on the Forge is an example of proletarian literature, a genre whose works usually represented the years surrounding the Great Depression. The experience of the characters in the novel mirror the class struggles during the Great Migration, specifically the hardships of African American workers during this period. The Moss brothers are realistically depicted as "emerging black proletariat."
Migration narrative
Attaway's novel is also a migration narrative, as it traces the journey of African American brothers from Southern farm life to the industrial North. Lawrence R. Rodgers states that there are four kinds of migration narratives, the Early Migration Novel, the Harlem Renaissance, the Fugitive Migration Novel, and finally the Communal Migrant Novel, which is post-Depression. Blood on the Forge would be considered an Early Migration Novel, as it takes place during the early 20th century and because of its industrial subject matter. Rodgers explains that Harlem Renaissance works do not discuss the actual migration, only what came of it, and in her review of Rodgers' Canaan Bound: The African-American Great Migration Novel, Farrah Jasmine Griffin states, "If the Harlem Renaissance writers failed to make the most of the migration novel form, the generation that followed—fueled by the depression economy, personal deprivation, and a strong sense of displacement—put migration at the center, not the periphery, of its artistic imagination." In particular, Chicago writers such as Attaway were responding to the failures of Harlem Renaissance writers to express the first wave of African American migration.
One important aspect of the migration narrative is its emphasis on the differences between the traditional (or folk) and the modern. Migration narratives typically include references to ancestors and strangers, with ancestors being linked to the South and strangers to the North. In Blood on the Forge, the immigrants the Moss brothers work with in the mills would be considered strangers.Griffin, Farah Jasmine (1995). "Who set you flowin'?": the African-American migration narrative, p. 3. Oxford University Press. . Ancestors are also linked with folklore and tradition, such as music and food. Melody tries to keep the brother's heritage alive with his guitar. Each brother experiences his own shift from the folk to the industrial that is characteristic of the Great Migration. Melody changes the way he plays the guitar from slicking the chords, as he did at home, to picking them. Chinatown loses his eyes in an accidental explosion in the mills, forcing him to adapt to the industrial world as a blind man. Big Mat is the last one to leave behind his tradition. While at home he lashed out in anger against his oppressors, such as the riding boss, in the North Big Mat joins the oppressor as he becomes a deputy, using his anger to break his fellow workers' strike. Edward E. Waldron describes him as becoming "as destructive as the exploding furnace".
Style
Form of the migration narrative In her book, Who Set You Flowin'?: The African American Migration Narrative, Farah Jasmine Griffin explains that the migration narrative is a dominant form in African American culture. Griffin cites Lawrence Rodgers as the first to identify migration with the emergence of a new genre: the Great Migration Novel. This type of work that Blood on the Forge is associated with has a specific narrative form. In relation to the dominant white society, all migrants are strangers: foreigners driven by persecution to wander in search of a new home. In Attaway's novel, the mill workers all fall under this category. The Moss brothers work with foreign immigrants as well as other Southern migrants like themselves. Within the context of the African American community, the stranger is that figure who possesses no connections to the community. As they migrate to the industrial North, the Moss brothers leave their home and traditions, and start over in a place where they have no connections.
Griffin describes four moments that occur in migration narratives. Not all migration narratives have all four, and they need not occur in this order. 1) An event that propels action north. In Blood on the Forge, this event is the opportunity for new jobs and a better life. 2) Presentation of the initial confrontation within the urban landscape. The first confrontation the Moss brothers have is when they get off the train and arrive in the city for their new job. As they do this, they meet immigrants and are confronted with the diversity and entirely different atmosphere of the urban landscape. 3) Illustration of attempt to negotiate. The bulk of the novel is the brothers trying to adapt to their new lifestyle. 4) Vision of possibilities or limitations of the North. We see both limitations and possibilities of the North in this novel. At the end as Melody and Chinatown leave for a new opportunity in a new city, there is a sense of possibility for a better situation than the previous one. Limitations of the North can be seen in several instances throughout the story. Chinatown loses his eyes in a fatal explosion in the mills, and Big Mat loses his life trying to gain respect.
Characters
Major characters
Big Mat