Go Tell It on the Mountain Contrasting Regions: North & South Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #4

"I ain't heard from her real lately." She paused. Then: "I don't believe she so happy up there." "And serve her right, too—she ain't had no business going away from here like she did, just like a crazy woman." (2.2.26-27)

Deborah probably misses her friend, Florence, but she isn't very nice about it. Instead of being concerned that her friend and sister-in-law is unhappy, she blames her for it. She relates moving up North to being crazy; only an insane person would leave the safety of home for the unknown.

Quote #5

And he saw, in this wandering, how far his people had wandered from God. They had all turned aside, and gone out into the wilderness, to fall down before idols of gold and silver, and wood and stone, false gods that could not heal them. The music that filled any town or city he entered was not the music of the saints but another music, infernal, which glorified lust and held righteousness up to scorn. (2.2.287)

Gabriel leaves his home in the South to go preaching in the cities, to make some extra money and forget his troubles. What he sees in the urban centers is, for him, shocking. He believes that all black people have left their values behind when they migrated to the city, as evidenced by the newfangled music

Quote #6

And blood, in all the cities through which he passed, ran down. (2.2.288)

For Gabriel, the cities (the North) represent death, violence, and destruction. Surely the blood isn't literally just running through the streets, but that's the metaphorical sense he gets. Of course, it's hard to ignore the fact that black men and women are murdered and raped in his hometown in the South, too.