Approach of The Study

again” p.130, and “God be with you till we meet again” p.130. However, only the performance of “The Old Ship of Zion” that is described while the two next songs become the background of another scene. Baldwin placed the description of the revival meeting in the middle-end of the story, after he finishes describing Sonny’s and the narrator’s past: Sonny’s problems with heroin, his arrest on a raid, the fights they had before, and also the description of their family in the past. The revival meeting sets in the avenue across the narrator’s house. It is conducted by three sisters dressed in black and a brother. They were surrounded by some people. There are also some people who watch the revival meeting from the distance. Baldwin describes some of these people especially the barbecue cook who watch from the doorway. The barbecue cook, wearing dirty apron, his conked hair reddish and metallic in the pale sun, and a cigarette between his lips, stood in the doorway, watching them. p.128 To signify the presence of the revival meeting, Baldwin describes some other people stopping their activities to watch the revival meeting. This description shows that the revival meeting attracts the people attention. Kids and older people paused in their errands and stood there, along with some older men and a couple of a very tough-looking women who watched everything that happened on the avenue, as though they owned it, or were owned by it. Well, they were watching this too. p.128 Then, Baldwin describes how the three sisters and the brother conduct the revival meeting. All they had were their voices and their Bibles and a tambourine. The brother was testifying and while he testified two of the sisters stood together, seeming to say, amen, and the third sister walked around with the tambourine outstrectched and a couple of people dropped coins into it. Then the brother’s testimony ended and the sister who had been taking up the collection dumped the coins into her palm and transferred them to the pocket of her long black robe. Then she raised both hands, striking the tambourine against the air, and then against one hand, and she started to sing. And the two other sisters and the brother joined in. p.128 Although this is only a street revival meeting with few instruments, Baldwin describes how the performance conducted as a grand ritual. The purpose of the three sisters and the brother conducting the revival is to rescue people by proclaiming the Christian’s path of salvation. They want the people listen to them and share the joy experiences achieved through music and singing rather than merely gaining their coins. Baldwin makes a subjective description from the narrator’s point of view that actually this kind of performance is not a strange thing for the people. They had watched the street revival many times before. However, the narrator notices that the people still to be ignorant or not really listening to them. Even the narrator thinks that actually people do not really believe in the revival because they also knew that the sisters and the brother are ordinary people, they knew them and live like them. Not a soul under the sound of their voices was hearing this song for the first time, not one of them had been rescued. Nor had they seen much in the way of rescue work being done around them. Neither did they especially believe in the holiness of the three sisters and the brother, they knew too much about them, knew where they lived, and how. p.129. However, Baldwin still emphasizes the importance of the music performance. He wants to say that the music has a special role in the revival. The text shows that the people start to be affected emotionally by the music as the revival performance progress: