Nobody likes a Dutchman

Written for my Black Literature class, our task was to write a focused, analytic paper making an argument about a specific problem, device, or pattern in a single text from our syllabus.

Dutchman depicts Lula as a sexually aggressive white woman who has her eyes set on Clay a Black man who struggles with the concept of double consciousness. Throughout the play Lula uses her legs as a tool of seduction and actively uses her legs to pursue Clay. The subway setting adds some friction to her plans because Clay is hyper-aware of their public setting. He is only able to pull himself out of Lula’s spell of seduction as the subway makes itself known. This causes an increase in frustration for both of them in different ways. Lula; unable to fully submerge Clay in her trap and Clay; unable to figure out what he really wants. He is attracted to Lula but cannot act on it due to the very public nature of their interaction. This building frustration culminates in violence. Clay uses his arms to pin Lula down and slap her around. She kills Clay by stabbing him twice and has him dragged off the train. The train continues on and Lula merely prepares for her next victim. Dutchman by Amiri Baraka uses the subway as a metaphor and personifies emotions to shed light on how the stagnation that comes from racial submission transforms from frustration to passionate acts of violence, thus creating an endless loop of aggression, revealing how the text itself argues that passivity is the byproduct of assimilation and that adopting a double consciousness mindset will not circumvent the violent nature of white oppression.

First, Baraka clearly sets up Lula as the sexual aggressor in this dynamic and he does so by describing so much of her expressed sexuality through her legs. In her first interaction with Clay, Lula calls him out for ogling her. This moment is important because it ties Clay’s passivity through his literal gaze and stare to Lula’s sexuality represented by her legs. Clay denies staring and flips the accusation onto Lula, “I was. But only after I'd turned around and saw you staring through that window down in the vicinity of my ass and legs” (Baraka 3). This moment establishes Lula as the pursuer and one who is especially dangerous because she knows how she lures men in. It is also important to note that she refers to her “ass” first. This is striking because it steers the conversation in a sexual direction by using the sexual name for her body part. She is very much driving in this sense, thus pacifying Clay. He is along for the ride, both literally and metaphorically. Attempting to navigate a world where he thinks that the best way to exist is by assimilating and presenting an identity that was created purely for the perception of white people. As Lula surprises him with accurate guesses about his life there is another moment of seduction. This time she uses Clay’s own leg. “Putting her hand on Clay's closest knee, drawing it from the knee up to the thigh's hinge, then removing it, watching his face very closely, and continuing to laugh, perhaps more gently than before” (Baraka 6). In this moment, she is focusing the conversation and their bodies around Clay. She is drawing him closer in the psychical sense and matching that by displaying an ‘insider's knowledge’ of Black culture. She has figured out that inorder to get to Clay she has to convince him that she understands him. He is able to navigate both white and Black society by presenting differently to either group, so she must signal to him that she is also a double agent in hopes that he will act on his urges soon after. 

In fact, shortly after she directly compliments Clay. Lula calls him handsome and he thanks her politely. This response does not please Lula but Clay is too concerned with their present setting to be aware of that. “Raising his voice, thinking the train noise has drowned part of his sentence” (Baraka 8). This clearly communicates that Clay is unlikely to do what Lula wants because this interaction is taking place in a subway car. This moment builds frustration for Lula specifically, who realizes she must switch tactics, much like a train would switch tracks, in order to achieve her goal. She becomes more sexually aggressive and directs Clay on what to say to her. His response to her, “Watch it now, you're gonna excite me for real. LULA [ Taking her hand away and throwing her apple core through the window] I bet. [ She slumps in the seat and is heavily silent]” (Baraka 12). Here Baraka confirms that even with directing Clay is always going to choose to be passive around white people and that is expressed through Lula’s frustration and her interacting directly with the train car. Her tossing her apple out the window to signify another dashed seduction attempt and her slumping in the seat to depict her frustration and defeat conveys how metaphorically the subway they are riding parallels their current predicament. This moment is another stopping point for them, another moment of stagnation. Each clearly wants something from the other yet they cannot get it. 

Moreover, when Clay’s frustration bubbles over it culminates in a large amount of showy violence; largely because living a life of double consciousness caused him to suppress so much of his feelings for so long. Lula has increased her advances and is more emboldened by the minute. Fed up, Clay grabs her and pushes her into the seat. He bats down anyone attempting to interfere and “Slaps her as hard as he can, across the mouth. LULA' s head bangs against the back of the seat. When she raises it again, CLAY slaps her again” (Baraka 25). Here there is so much violence and action taken on Clay’s part and it is primarily coming from his hands and arms. If the first time he hits Lula is to regain control, the second time he hits her serves as a warning. This is what he’s capable of, this is what she’s driven him to, this is what he will continue to do until things go back to normal. This is reinforced when he refutes Lula telling him what he should be, “Well, don't! Don't you tell me anything! If I'm a middle-class fake white man . . . let me be. And let me be in the way I want” (Baraka 25). In this moment Amiri Baraka conveys to the audience how the concept of double consciousness is inherently flawed because white people will always see you the way they want to see you no matter what you do, and trying to appease them by assimilating to their ways will not absolve you of the violence that comes from racial oppression. 

Continuously, the push and pull style of their relationship is exacerbated by the transient nature of the train car itself, however this is a deception because the train runs on a loop and the passivity will only ever result in a violent ending. Clay moves to leave the train and Lula after his outburst, “As he is bending over her, the girl brings up a small knife and plunges it into CLAY' s chest. Twice. He slumps across her knees, his mouth working stupidly” (Baraka 26). Here we have Lula once again taking the active role and this time through an expression of anger that comes from her hands. Unlike Clay’s messy display of violence, her’s is measured and short. That being said, because it comes from a place of racial oppression, it is lethal. Her small moment of violence eclipses Clay’s violence because of her whiteness. She then calls out to the rest of the riders and gets them to throw Clay’s limp body out onto the platform. Lula carries on and by the next stop she has picked a new victim. The subway will continue to run this route, making stops, picking people up, and occasionally switching tracks; Lula will do the same; racial oppression will do the same. In short, the passivity of Clay that stemmed from his desire to assimilate into white society only prevented Clay from truly expressing himself. Either way Lula was going to kill him, being a double agent or acting out the theory of double consciousness was never going to be enough to exempt him from the wrath of whiteness. 

Works Cited

Baraka, I. A., & Knaak, R. A. (1964). Dutchman. Alexander Street Press.