Chester Himes Cotton Comes To Harlem

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As discussed in the previous class, one predominant theme in Chester Himes’ Cotton Comes to Harlem is that of religion. This theme, as expected, also permeates the second half of the novel. A particular excerpt that portrays this theme that I would like to bring into further analysis occurs in page 110 at the beginning of chapter 16. Himes writes, “Everything happens in Harlem six days a week, but Sunday morning, people worship God.” In addition, Himes states, “The bars are close. The stores are closed. The streets are deserted save for the families on their way to church. A drunk better not be caught molesting them; he’ll get all the black beat off him.” In the first quote, Himes draws a stark juxtaposition between the events of Harlem on …show more content…
Broadly speaking, the only three female characters that have any major role in the novel are Mabel, Iris, and Billie; all of whom are portrayed as sexually promiscuous. For instance, Mabel has something of an erotic obsession with the religious persona of Deke and is killed because of it, Iris uses sex as a means of escaping police surveillance, and Billie is an exotic dancer. Additionally, Iris often jokes about performing sexual favors, such as when she is being interrogated as casually tell Coffin Ed that he could “rape her.” While this is obviously not even close to a holistic representation of the female gender, this is a theme that is shared across Hard-Boiled fiction. For instance, we see this same type of manipulation and flippant offers of sex in Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, especially in Brigid O'Shaughnessy. There are distinct similarities between Brigid asking Sam if she can “Buy [him] with [her] body” and when Iris casually says that Ed and Jones can “rape” her. Above all, it is evident that portrayal of women in this subgenre of mystery fiction is that of manipulating and sexually promiscuous, and is by and large one-dimensional and
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Cotton Comes To Harlem Analysis

Chester Himes is quite the character, an everyday person. Despite having spent 16 years in prison for an alleged armed robbery, he still managed to become a successful novel writer. Criticized for his so many and conflicting writing genres, Himes wrote about the current events of the time that people then could closely relate too. The skill in Himes’s prophetic writing style, common in the Modernist time period, earns people to refer to him as the “father of black crime fiction”. In Cotton Comes…

Words 825 - Pages 4