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James Weldon Johnson Analysis

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In James Weldon Johnson’s publication of God’s Trombone, he includes several sermons, as well as illustrations provided by Aaron Douglas, a leading artist during the Harlem Renaissance. Johnson and Douglas revamp the way readers, specifically African Americans of the South, viewed God. One particular sermon, “The Creation,” tells the story of creation from a different viewpoint. Throughout this sermon, Johnson provides his readers with humanistic qualities of God. In lines 1-4, Johnson uses words, like “lonely,” to represent God as a personal being who is near and close, unlike the Old Testament version, which depicts God as distant and ominous. In lines 5-13, Johnson tells how God separated the light on one side, and darkness on another. Douglas incorporates this into his illustration by using different colors and hues. Douglas shows the darkness of the world gradually growing lighter by the moon. He also chose the color purple for God’s hand, which represents royalty.
Johnson goes on to say that “God rolled the light around in his hands until He made the sun” (lines 15-16). This shows that God carefully molded and formed everything, exactly like He wanted it to be. Johnson also states in lines 18-21 that “God gathered it up in a shining ball and …show more content…
“Up from the bed of the river God scooped the clay; and by the banks of the river He kneeled down… like a mammy bending over her baby, kneeled down in the dust toiling over a lump of clay till he shaped it in his own image” (lines 76-87). Douglas specifically placed the man by the riverbank where God molded and formed him. Douglas could have also used the lines in the sky to represent God’s breath of life. In Genesis 2:7, which states “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (The Holy Bible, NKJV), God makes it very clear that He gives life to

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