Stranger in the Village

The Cathedral at Chartres signifies for Baldwin the divergent experiences that result from a single place or event. After introducing the term on Page 121, Baldwin goes on to analyze it at greater length on Page 128. He speculates on what white people see and feel when they approach the cathedral before describing his own experience before the edifice. The cathedral is known for its High Gothic architecture and was built during the 12th and 13th centuries. Baldwin explains, “I doubt that the villagers think of the devil when they face a cathedral because they have never been identified with the devil” (128).

The word “human” is central to the claims Baldwin makes through his analysis of his experiences. When Baldwin describes his first encounters with Swiss villagers, he notes that he “was simply a living wonder” (119). The Swiss did not appear to intend any cruelty, but “there was yet no suggestion that I was human” (119). A few pages later Baldwin describes the desire of Black people that white people “recognize [them] as human being[s]” (122). In a sense, Baldwin’s discussion of identities and interracial encounters is a humanist endeavor. Baldwin analyzes the effort to keep a distance between white people and Black people—the distance of humanity—by saying that “this vision of the world is dangerously inaccurate, and perfectly useless” (128).

Baldwin employs the word “stranger” as a key distinction between white Americans and the white Europeans in the Swiss village where he finds himself at the beginning of the essay. Baldwin concludes, “I am not, really, a stranger any longer for any American alive,” whereas for the Swiss villagers, he still appears as a stranger who inspires wonder (124, 129). This term is significant for understanding the differential experience of being called “Neger” in the Swiss village versus the n-word in New York City (123-24). While the sense of wonder with which he is shouted after in Switzerland gives him the feeling that he is not being attacked, the familiarity and venom with which the word is used in the United States signifies war and violence in his mind (124).