[In the following chapter excerpt, Lacey states that race is not a central theme of "The Toilet" and Baraka's involvement with the Beat movement is evident.]

["The Toilet"] derives much of its power from Baraka's faithful presentation of the experiences of the adolescent boy. The writer's ability in this area is seen again, and perhaps to best advantage, in the stories of Tales. Everything belongs in this extremely naturalistic play. The earthy language, rivaling even that heard in "The Baptism," is a real and necessary part of this world of young, primarily black, urban school boys. The language of "The Toilet" emphasizes the intense but misguided efforts of these adolescents to assert their manhood. Likewise, the setting, a "large bare toilet of gray rough cement…" and resembling "the impersonal ugliness of a school toilet or a latrine of some institution," is right for this work. The setting is symbol of our bleak and viciously regulated world. In retrospect, even the strong introductory stage directions do not seem excessive. The play opens with these instructions: "The actors should give the impression frequently that the place smells." After seeing one of the actors urinate into one of the commodes, "spraying urine over the seat," we are ready for the first lines of "The Toilet."

As pointed out by Paul Witherington in "Exorcism and Baptism in LeRoi Jones's 'The Toilet'" [Modern Drama, Sept. 1972], the boys wish to show their masculinity by discarding all maternal or "soft" values. At the same time, however, they are driven to find means of expressing love within the group. Consequently, the boys have a real need for affection as well as a fear of the demands of love. Their thwarted libidinal urge is expressed in the form of violence. The dialogue, often funny and firmly rooted in the black idiom, not only focuses on universally identifiable character types (the bully, the coward, the "signifier"). It simultaneously probes the various ways by which the boys enforce the taboo against tenderness.

Driven to deny impulses which they consider "unmanly," the boys exhibit hostility in varying forms throughout the play. These actions culminate in the desperate actuality of physical violence against Karolis. However, the violence takes a more subtle appearance in the early stages of the drama. The boys engage in name-calling and the well known ghetto game, "the dozens," at the start of the action. Both activities serve to shield the participants from the greatly feared overt expression of love, an expression that is ironically manifested in the very need for the gang. Yet, the boys feel that as long as they can call one another "bastid" or "cocksucka," they remain safely within the boundaries of masculine behavior. The same motivating factor is in evidence in the playing of "the dozens," a game in which the participants exchange slurs about one another's parents. The slurs are usually of a sexual nature and directed against the mother. Witherington is perhaps correct in seeing this game as additional evidence that the boys are attempting to exorcise maternal values. It is no less indicative of their desire to show their hardness, their ability to give and take the most crushing blows short of actual violence. The winner of "the dozens" competition is invariably the "man" who through his sheer poetic skill and bawdy imagination can force his opponent to actual violence, or worse, tears. …

Although repressed behavior is seen in all the boys, with the exceptions of Karolis and Farrell, it is most glaringly present in the brutal Ora. Ora evinces an absolute horror of compassion, and justly so. If we consider the controlling metaphor for love in the drama, i.e., homosexuality Ora shows himself most vulnerable to its expression. We see it, first, in his frequently invoked appellations ("cock-sucka," "dick licker"). He, furthermore, attempts to engage in oral sex with Karolis and is only interrupted by Ray's entrance. Ora is a latent homosexual. In terms of the metaphorical implications of the play, however, he has a tremendous desire to express love. Because his world does not allow this expression, he inverts his desire. While the callous Oras can live with this necessary inversion, the sensitive Rays cannot.

Foots/Ray is Baraka's earliest presentation of the skinny, intelligent, bug-eyed, middle-class black boy who figures so prominently in the author's writings. We see him as a young child in "Uncle torn's Cabin: Alternate Ending" (Tales). In some of the stories, even the name Ray is used. Much of the writer's own life went into these various portraits.

Ray is the middle-class black boy who is torn between two cultures. The dramatist's description of him as "manic" is not extreme. His psychic trauma stems from the schizoid nature of his existence. His problem will be articulated later by Clay in "Dutchman." We get our first glimpse of Ray's problem and the boys' understanding of it in Hines's statement concerning Ray's whereabouts. Hines says:

I think he's still in Miss Powell's class. You know if he missed her class she'd beat his head, and then get his ol' lady to beat his head again.

The white teachers take a special interest in Ray because he is "one" worth saving. The other boys are lost causes. The knowledge of his special treatment causes Ray intense feelings of guilt. Hence, his tremendous desire to belong to his black peers. His feeble attempts to laugh at this situation only serve to intensify our appreciation of his pain:

That goddamn Van Ness had me in his office. He said I'm a credit to my race. (Laughs and all follow.) He said I'm smart-as-a-whip (imitating Van Ness) and should help him to keep all you unsavory (again imitating) elements in line. (All laugh again).

This halting laughter reveals the insecurity of all concerned. Ray is whiter. His homelife most assuredly is closer to that of the teachers than to the black peers. His good grades are sure to lead him to college and a comfortable niche in mainstream society. His upwardly mobile mother, the stereotypical Yiddish mother in blackface, will be there to counter every backsliding move on his part. In spite of these things, he manages to hold onto his role as leader. He does it through sheer intellectual prowess and the actor's ability to project a consummate "macho" image, which is all the more important to Ray because of his fragile physique.

Whereas the gang will tolerate a bourgeois intellectual as a leader, it will never accept a leader whose masculinity is in doubt. Consequently, Ray must deny his relationship with Karolis in order to belong. He must be Foots, not Ray. At the height of the fury, Karolis tells the gang members as much:

[ … ] his name is Ray, not Foots. You stupid bastards. I love somebody you don't even know.

Karolis understands that his lover is "Foots" only when he surrenders to the gang's debased concept of manhood. The nickname itself implies a plodding, lock-stepped entanglement. "Ray," on the other hand, implies freedom and the light of the spirit, able to shine only when free of the restraining pressures of the group.

"The Toilet," despite its violence and ugliness, does conclude on an optimistic note. After the climactic confrontation, the boys leave Karolis bleeding on the urine-soaked toilet floor. Ray manages to sneak back to his side undetected. The play ends in silence, but with the following stage directions:

… the door is pushed open slightly, then it opens completely and FOOTS comes in. He stares at Karolis ' body for a second, looks quickly over his shoulder then runs and kneels before the body, weeping and cradling the head in his arms.

In this markedly maternal gesture, Ray rejects the "macho" role demanded by the gang and asserts another understanding of "manhood." The real man is again the individual with the strength to divorce himself from the inhibiting influence of the majority. In these early works that individual is the homosexual. In the ensuing works the black American takes over this role, as Baraka becomes increasingly convinced that "any black American, simply by virtue of his blackness is weird, a nonconformist in this society."

Though this play has little explicit to say concerning the issue of race, the final scene causes some critics to see the whole work as a statement on race relations. Even Baraka himself seems to have forgotten the real issue of the play. Speaking of the conclusion, he says:

When I first wrote the play, it ended with everybody leaving. I tacked the other ending on; the kind of social milieu that I was in dictated the kind of rapproachment. It actually did not evolve from the pure spirit of the play. I've never changed it of course, because I feel that now that would only be cute. I think you should admit where you were even if it's painful, but you should also understand your development and growth. … But that was ground that I walked on and covered, I can't deny it now.

Baraka is, of course, right in saying that the Beat milieu dictated the concluding scene, but he is wrong in implying that "that kind of rapprochment" should be read "racial rapprochaient." Were Karolis black or Ray white, the play would carry the same thematic weight. Basically, "The Toilet" is no more concerned with race than is "The Baptism." A measure of the writer's total involvement in his milieu is seen in his ability to populate his works with blacks and whites, even in conflict, and yet not be obsessed with race as central theme.

Although "The Baptism" and "The Toilet" are obviously products of the same period in the writer's development, their dissimilarity in style is worthy of comment. "The Baptism" is in no way an attempt at "representational" drama. Markedly expressionistic in technique, the work is evidence of the writer's awareness of the absurdists, who gained prominence in the '50's and '60's. Like the works of the absurdists, "The Baptism" is a conscious rejection of realistic theatre. This anti-realism is effected in a number of ways. First, the existence of the characters as "believable" examples of everyday humanity is purposely undercut by their lack of personal names. Minister, boy, old woman, etc. bear testimony to the de-personalizing consequences of modern society. The fragmented, often nonsensical, speech of the characters, strikingly similar to some of the more private lyrics of Baraka, is exemplary of the conscious cacophony of the absurdists. The general effect of distortion and unreality is enhanced also by the abundance of raw sounds, especially "moaning" and "screaming." Because of these and other effects, "The Baptism" frequently approaches the realm of cartoon. The humor is, however, balanced by the viewer's unsettling knowledge that the play images the chaos of his own life. Finally, "The Baptism", like the best works of the absurdists, is impervious to any definitive analysis. The play, like the world of which it is a part, refuses to yield an absolutely logical meaning. This is not the case with "The Toilet."

"The Toilet" is a drama of extreme realism, or naturalism. Everything about the play is intended to enhance the viewer's belief in the actuality of the situation. The setting is of extreme importance in that it grounds the viewers in the tactile. Indeed it is no accident that Baraka emphasizes the solidity of the scene ("The scene is a large bare toilet built of gray rough cement."). Like the setting, the other aspects of the drama, characterization, diction, and action, express the same concreteness. The boys are all flesh and blood "types" with particular names. They also speak an understandable, earthy idiom. Furthermore, their actions, urinating intermittently, and giving the "impression frequently that the place smells," add to the viewer's illusion that he is secretly observing life in a public school "John" in all its squalor. "The Toilet," unlike "The Baptism," offers a meaning as explicit as its technique.