User:MaxB97/A Visitation of Spirits

Plot

Plot Summary

Introduction

Horace Cross, a sixteen-year old descendant of slaves in the fictional town of Tims Creek, undergoes a single night of demon-filled hallucinations concerning his life as a closeted gay black teenager thus far. The night ends in a confrontation with his second cousin, James (Jimmy) Greene, at Tims Creek Elementary School. Jimmy Greene, a former high school principal turned minister, spends his self-narrated sections of the plot reflecting on this confrontation and the inner fighting of his family's history.

The Cross/Greene Family

The family that comprises most of the novel's characters plays a pivotal role in the novel's plot. Randall Kenan introduces the many members of the novel's fictional Cross and Greene family tree in a non-sequential manner, going back at least four generations of the family's line. A comprehensive table detailing the canonical structure of the Cross and Greene family tree goes as follows:

A canonical representation of the Cross and Greene family tree (Male characters are in blue tiles, while female characters are in pink tiles.)

Plot Structure

Randall Kenan utilizes a postmodern narrative structure, in which the sequential order of the novel's plot is rearranged, namely in an intertwining of Horace's night of hallucinations and reflections from both Ezekiel and Jimmy approximately a year later.

Horace's storyline takes place over the course of April 29th and April 30th, 1984. It begins when he attempts to turn himself into a bird in the backyard of his grandfather Zeke's house, using a satanic and anti-Christian ritual. However, the spell backfires and it is interpreted that a demon begins to coerce and fully control Horace, guiding him through a full night of reflection on his failure to find love and acceptance through his queer identity. Horace is guided to visit the local church, his teacher's house, his high school, the Crosstown Theater, and finally Tims Creek Elementary, where he confronts Jimmy at gunpoint.

Jimmy's storyline takes place throughout the day of December 8th, 1985.

These two main storylines are also enveloped between two nonlinear passages that pivot around a traditional rural hog-killing in the South and an unnamed narrator who asks if the reader remembers the intricacies of the practice.

Narrative Themes and Morals

Queer Identity in the Rural South

The story incorporates themes of queer identity through the sections surrounding Horace Cross. The majority of Horace's nightlong hallucinations tell of the realization of his homosexuality and the subsequent negative backlash he faced in every aspect of his life.

Kenan's gothic allusions throughout Horace's sections, such as the dialogue between Horace and the demon who begins to possess his body, are a means of relating the themes of race and sexuality together.

Family History and Lineage

The background story of the Cross family's history plays an integral part in understanding how reputation and lineage effects the specific values that the Crosses choose to uphold. Through Ezra Cross and his ancestors, the Cross family in the novel is actually derived from the white Cross family to which they owe their name to. Several Tims Creek destinations, such as the Crosstown Theater, are referenced to be the work of the white Cross family whose own wealth and reputation is directly linked to the field work of Ezra and his slave ancestors.

For the African American Cross family derived from Ezra Cross, their multi-generational residency in Tims Creek has created a solidified reputation of historical importance, one that both elevates their name and chains the family members to a certain degree of expected success or dignity. For Horace in particular, being both a straight-"A" student and one of the youngest of the family suggests that the future of the Cross family's reputation will lie in his hands. However, any time Horace attempts to reveal an example of his queer identity, a factor that conflicts with the rural Southern traditions of religion and marriage, his family lashes out at him. The notion that a foreign element to the family's homogenous behavior will immediately bring down the reputation of the Cross family in Tims Creek is therefore apparent.

Importance of Christianity

Because the fictional town of Tims Creek is supposed to specifically resemble a multitude of rural towns in the American deep South, Kenan alludes to and ultimately criticizes a large amount of how Christian values are wrongly applied, namely by members of the Cross family. Specifically, because Horace's desires to be accepted by his family through the lens of a queer identity are promptly shot down and denied, especially by Jimmy as a minister of the local Baptist church, Kenan is criticizing the intolerant and ensnaring tendencies that are brought through a misinterpretation of the Bible.

Cultural Allusions

• While unnamed in their references, Horace's room is described to be decorated with superhero posters of what can be assumed to be The Hulk, Wonder Woman, and Thor.
• Aunt Ruth plays a portable version of what can be assumed to be a portable version of Pac-Man on a young girl's video-game player.