Impact of Paternal Influence

Baldwin's relationship with his father was complex and troubled. In both his essays and in his autobiographical novel Go Tell it on the Mountain,Baldwin describes a cold, distant man, who is severely religious and fanatically judgmental. All Baldwin, as a teenager, has to do is tell his father that his close friend at school is Jewish, and the father slaps him in the mouth. In the novel, the only person who stands up to the father is young Baldwin's aunt, with her insight into the father's moralizing and abusive behavior as a means of displaced aggression, of punishing his son for his own (the father's) misdeeds.
Yet James Baldwin was influenced by his father into becoming a preacher himself when he was young, and into having his own religious experiences. Later he rejected organized religion. The one moment he describes of actual direct communication with his father is when his father says to him, "You'd rather write than preach, wouldn't you?" For once, his father has acknowledged him as an independent person with a will of his own. It is virtually the only breakthrough occurring between them. But the knowledge of how his father's character was shaped by his having to deal with racial oppression, first in the old South and then in Harlem, leads James to an understanding of the racial dynamic existing through the US as a whole. James thus arrives at some measure of healing and empathy.
Baldwin's bonding with his mother contrasts with the harsh father. In Go Tell it on the Mountain, the moment in which his mother presses a small amount of money into his hand and says, "It's all I have," indicates the boundless sacrifices his mother makes and the understanding Baldwin has of the difficulties women of the period, especially African American women, were faced with.