“The Flying Dutchman” is a nautical myth about a ghost ship destined to sail the ocean waves for all eternity. The story has its roots in the legend of Hendrik van der Decken, a 17th-century Dutch captain who dared to sail past the Cape of Good Hope despite adverse weather conditions. As a result, he and his crew were doomed to “beat these seas” forever. The ship's wraith is therefore said to be sometimes sighted from afar, usually accompanied by an aura of ghostly light. The mere sight of the infested ship is considered by seafarers as an omen of bad weather or, more generally, as a "portion of misfortune". Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In the play Dutchman, LeRoi Jones (aka Amiri Baraka) incorporates particular elements of this myth to dramatize the dilemma faced by African Americans adapting to life in the white, middle-class environment. As represented by the play's subway setting, the figure of Lula, and the climactic actions (manipulations) she and the other subway passengers commit at the conclusion of the Dutchman, Jones's revision of the Flying Dutchman myth conveys the nature fixed and interminable of the race. relationships and power structures that exist in the United States. At the end of the play, Jones creates his own myth of “freedom” for the African American trapped in this locked system of power, and constructs a modern legend that, too, will repeat itself in an eternal cycle of domination and destruction. In Jones' work, the ship of legend “The Flying Dutchman,” condemned to an existence of eternal wandering, is reimagined as the modern urban subway. In the context of the play, the prison of continuous movement and human entrapment embodied by the mythical vessel signals the perpetuation of established race relations and power structures. In particular, Jones uses the image of the subway as a way to frame his critique of the social reform that occurred during his time. Written in 1964, Dutchman coincides, as it was then informed, with the radical movements and political turbulence characteristic of the decade, including civil rights, the black arts movement, and the onset of the Vietnam conflict. However, by setting Dutchman in a closed subway, Jones creates the effect of liminal space. As a “ship” always in transition, the subway symbolizes movement without progress, action without change. Careening into the “flying belly of the city” (Dutchman, 3), the subway-as-ship is nevertheless on a static path to no particular destination or varied resolution. Thus, by juxtaposing the liminality of the subway against the broader, implicit backdrop of its particular historical moment, Jones seems to suggest that, despite changes anticipated or presumed by social “revolutions,” the course of race and power relations will remain the same. (White will continue to dominate black.) Furthermore, as a renewed image of the ship “The Flying Dutchman,” the underground of modernity is immersed by the ocean waters above, into the “boiling” (3) depths of the city below. By placing Dutchman in the urban underground, Jones constructs an underground space in which the actions that occur are projected in a light of harsh veracity (as if, in the belly of the metropolis, one sees reality: "what is really happening" – that artifice of the world above ground hides). The underground aspect of the subway also dramatizes the concept of repression, particularly the repression of freedom of expression. Clay's experience with this type ofrepression is highlighted in Dutchman through her interactions with Lula and the legacy of white control that she encapsulates. If Jones draws on the myth of “The Flying Dutchman” to affirm his belief in the perpetuation of racial and power systems, one could also see his work as using the image of the fatal ship as a metaphor for this same paradigm of domination white and black submission. In this way, Lula herself is the embodiment or extension of the doomed vessel, representing both the history of race relations in America and acting as an agent for the preservation of this traditional ideology of power. For example, throughout the play's dialogue, Lula thinks she has "anchored" Clay because she recognizes his "type." She assumes certain facts about Clay's life – that he lives in New Jersey, is trying to grow a beard, is going to visit his best friend, a “skinny black guy with a fake English accent” (10). Surprised by the accuracy of Lula's assessment, Clay wonders how she knows so much about him. “I told you I didn't know anything about you…” she replies, “you're a well-known guy… Or at least I know the guy very well” (12). Therefore, Lula not only gives voice to stereotypes about blacks present in the white community. It also embodies the process of stereotyping itself and highlights the sense of strength and dominance that such an exercise of social control generates. However, in Dutchman, the historical image of Lula is carefully, or more notably, framed as one of seduction, and it is through her powers of temptation that she is able to trap and exert her “white strength” on Clay . The portrayal of Lula as a temptress is another way in which elements of the Flying Dutchman myth are reworked in Jones' play. As such a figure, Lula continues to embody the image of the ghost ship by serving as both a portent and an agent of doom, bringing bad luck to the unfortunate traveler who encounters the haunted ship. Specifically, in Dutchman, Lula seduces Clay (the object of her lucky “ship”) into her web of manipulation and destruction. Her seductive qualities are clearly established by her introductory characterization. Described as a “beautiful woman” with “long red hair,” wearing “skimpy summer dresses” and “bright red lipstick” (5), Lula conveys an image not simply of sex, but of a dangerous and threatening sexuality. Therefore, she is a temptress because she is predatory, depicted with distinct designs on Clay. In the opening scene of Dutchman, Lula stares at Clay, who “lazily” – or by accident – ​​raises his head at this precise moment, meeting her gaze (4). When noticed, Lula smiles “premeditatedly” (4). This simple stage description suggests that Lula had deliberately sought Clay's accidental recognition to enact his pre-configured master plan (the plan of white domination). Clay returns her gesture but, in comparison, his smile is “without a trace of self-consciousness” (4). This contrast further illustrates the casual nature of the meeting from Clay's perspective, and thus also highlights the intentional and preconceived qualities of Lula's plan. She forces the hardships of her “bad weather” influence on Clay, sitting next to him on the subway, invading a space he has already comfortably occupied. Once captured, Clay cannot escape her manipulations, her intention to destroy him. Indeed, it is through these destructive acts that Lula, as well as other subway passengers, serve as tools for the perpetuation of race relations in America. A final way in which the ghost ship of the “Flying Dutchman” myth is reworked in Jones's contemporary drama is through the ultimate destruction of Clay,represented by both Lula and the other subway passengers. Because Lula's manipulations are the product of her powers of seduction, as well as her adherence to the ideology of white racial domination, she comes to represent the historical image of the white woman who incites the black man into danger. He achieves this representation within the play and ultimately destroys Clay, asserting full knowledge of his "authentic blackness" (having already identified his "type"), and then demanding that he fulfill his socially constructed definition of his " black self". " For example, she chastises him for adopting the bourgeois, bourgeois intellectual image suggested by his clothing, his “fun book jacket with all the buttons” (18). Lula says: Boy, those clothes with the narrow shoulders are from a tradition you should feel oppressed by. What right do you have to wear a three-button suit and a striped tie? he claims to know Clay's personal history by virtue of his generalization of his type. However, his knowledge is clearly wrong, as Clay matter-of-factly retorts his last line by replying, "My grandfather was a night watchman" (18) ( I also don't believe that, being a twenty-year-old in 1964, Clay could have a grandfather who was alive before emancipation a century earlier.) Therefore, Lula is so blatant in her faults that her ignorance seems almost laughable, and therefore the His claims or requests about Clay are easily rejected. However, the veracity of his statements is irrelevant. Rather, Lula's strength, the strength of his manipulations, derives precisely from this legacy of white ignorance. It is this veil of ignorance that distorts the truth, allowing white society to believe in the legitimacy of its own inaccurate assumptions and thus maintain a defense for its acts of oppression. Lula's erroneous knowledge, then, inspires or reinforces her (delusional) claim to possess an “understanding” of Clay's “authentic” blackness. He evokes this statement in the above, for example, when he insists that Clay's jacket represents "a tradition by which [he] should feel oppressed." He continues to needle Clay in this way, accusing him of not being completely "black". Lula sees him as nothing more than a “bright-lipped white man,” an “aspiring Christian” who is “not a nigger,” but simply a “dirty white man” (31). As he launches his attack, he becomes increasingly vulgar and outrageous in his behavior. She begins singing a song that "quickly becomes hysterical", throws the contents of her bag into the subway car, and dances in a provocative, obscene, and purposely embarrassing manner. He urges Clay to “stand up and yell at these people. How to scream senseless shit into these hopeless faces” (31). However, Lula's "crazy" antics are not arbitrary, and his insistence that Clay stand up to his oppressors is not motivated by an altruistic, "equal rights" mentality. After all, Lula is a member and embodiment of this system of oppression. Thus, his actions are specifically designed to get Clay to talk, with the particular goal of pushing him to both enact and confess a "core" violent nature that has long been white people's fear of black people. Inevitably, once trapped in Lula's trap (white society), Clay realizes her final project by speaking openly and articulating the very concept of "black violence". However, he distinguishes “violence” as not the essence of his black nature, as Lula's constructed perspective on black “authenticity” would suggest. Rather, it states that the.