SOURCE: "The Use of the Doppelganger or Double in Chester Himes' Lonely Crusade," in CLA Journal, Vol. XX, No. 4, June, 1977, pp. 448-58.

Chester Himes' second novel Lonely Crusade has not received the critical attention it merits. Critics have praised it for its protest and its naturalistic tendencies, or damned it for its Communistic implications, but so far no one has bothered to study the novel to ascertain how skillfully Himes uses doubles throughout the novel to propound his philosophy of the emasculation of the Black male. This paper, therefore, will be concerned with analyzing three of Himes' Black male characters: Lee Gordon, Lester McKinley and Luther McGregor, so that we can better understand Himes' use of doubles.

Set in Los Angeles during the war year of 1943, Lonely Crusade is concerned with the efforts of Lee Gordon, a college educated Black, to recruit the Black laborers of Comstock Aircraft Corporation and organize them to form a local union. His success as an organizer is impeded on the one hand by Comstock Corporation and its major shareholder-manager, Lewis Foster, who is symbolic of the socio-economic complex which discriminates against Blacks and blocks their social mobility, and on the other by the Communist and Communistic forces that would infiltrate the union for its own purposes.

In addition to Lee there are two other characters, Lester McKinley and Luther McGregor, who, in mental attitudes and social traits, act as doppelgangers or doubles to Lee. Robert Rogers, in his work, A Psychoanalytic Study of the Double in Literature, maintains that doubles and/or multiple characters might exist independently in a work but they are generally "fragments of some other characterological whole." Further, Rogers explains that there is doubling by division which involves "the splitting up of a recognizable, unified psychological entity into separate complementary distinguishable parts represented by seemingly autonomous characters."

Using the terms decomposition, doubling and fragmentation as synonyms (terms which will also be used in this paper as synonyms), Rogers maintains that a doppelganger might be a secret sharer or an opposing self. The secret sharer is a latent decomposition that has been "compounded and fused within the crucible of art by the catalytic heat of creative fire." According to Rogers such a double is difficult to define, not because he may exist as an independent entity, but rather because he is so deeply woven into the structure of the work that he becomes difficult to identify as a double.

The opposing self is the opposite of its double: for example, the bad self and the guardian angel, the normal self and the diabolical self. The opposing self might also symbolize possible alliances and divisions among the Id, Ego, and Super Ego.

Lester McKinley and Luther McGregor embrace Robert Rogers' definitions of doubles because they seem to exist independently of the protagonist. They are fully aware of their environment, and psychologically they function autonomously. However, the doubling motif which girds the novel, the coupling of incidences, both internal and external, the relationship between Lee and the decompositions—their affinities and their antagonism, and the similarities of their names—all suggest that Lee Gordon is a composite character and that Lester McKinley and Luther McGregor are the components that formalize the composition of the protagonist, Lee.

While Lester and Luther are not mirror images of Lee, there is ample evidence in the novel which indicates that these three characters are bound together in more than a haphazard relationship. For example, all three are involved with Foster and Comstock Aircraft Corporation. All three are fighting the socio-economic-industrial complex. All three are boxed in by discrimination.

However, the most obvious doubling technique in the novel, one which indicates that Himes' use of doubles could have been a conscious effort, is the naming of the characters: Lee Gordon, Lester McKinley, and Luther McGregor. At once the similarity strikes the reader as more than coincidental. It becomes obvious that phonetically the names are similar, especially in the persistent use of liquids in the first names—Lee, Lester, Luther. Linguistically, it appears as though the novelist wants us to see these three figures as one composite character. The mystery surrounding McKinely's name also encourages speculation of the doubling motif in the novel. The character changes his name to Lester McKinley after he becomes an adult, an act which might imply that during his formative years he conceived of himself as Lee, for as this essay will indicate, they do have similar experiences.

One finds too, on perusing the novel, that the similitude of names blurs the characters in the reader's mind; as a result, a reader could easily mistake Lester for Luther, or Luther for Lee. This identity crisis is especially true in the case of James Lindquist, who has published recently a critical study of Himes. In his work, Chester Himes, Lindquist makes several references to Lester McKinley, but he accidentally refers to Lester McKinley as Luther McKinley. While Lindquist does not discuss the doubling technique in the novel, subconsciously he sees Luther and Lester as one. The fact that a critic confuses these characters suggests that there is a need to study Himes' use of the double in Lonely Crusade.

It was stated earlier that the minor characters are not mirror images of the protagonist but rather extensions of him. A close analysis of the experiences of the characters, Lester and Luther, in comparison with the experiences of the composite, Lee, will demonstrate their similarities (and apparent differences) by establishing how they help to complete the character of Lee.

As a youngster, Lee was informed by one of his teachers that Blacks were heathens and that many of them were cannibals. Attending a predominantly white school, Lee observed the white males to see if there were any differences between whites and blacks that would make whites superior. Finding no differences between them and him, he hid in the girls' locker room to see if they were different. The Gordons were harried out of town for their son's act.

The family moved from Pasadena to Los Angeles, but one night while Lee's father was coming home from his janitorial job, he was accidentally shot and killed by a police officer who thought that he was a burglar. The city dismissed the killing as a natural mistake, implying that all Blacks were burglars. The traumatic experiences of Lee's youth terrified him. Because of the incidents, Lee suffered from "pure and simple fear of white folks"; further, he came to the conclusion that his destiny would be governed by the whims of whites.

As a college educated adult, Lee could not find employment for which he had been trained. The constant discriminatory practices of prospective employees, despite President Roosevelt's Executive Order 8802, turned Lee Gordon into a neurotic. The protagonist describes his emotional state in this way:

If you have never lain sleepless for seven straight nights, your navel drawing into your spine at the slightest sound, your throat muscles contracting into painful strictures, terrified by the thought of people whom you have never seen and might never see, then you would not understand. Living in the world outnumbered and outpowered by a race whom you think wants to hurt you at every opportunity.

The image presented here is one of a broken man. The sleeplessness, the contracting of the abdominal muscles, the tightness of the throat, and above all, the unknown fear of unknown people—all indicate that Lee is at the breaking point. Where Lee has reached that point Lester, his double, has passed it.

Lester McKinley's experiences parallel those of Lee's. If anything, they are more dramatic. Growing up in Georgia, Lester suffered from the same kind of racial pressures his other self, Lee, experienced. At the age of twelve he witnessed the lynching of a Black man, and from that day he had an overwhelming compulsion to kill whites. Lester attended Atlanta University and became a brilliant scholar in Latin, but his homicidal tendencies over-powered him. As a result, he left the South and moved to Albany, New York, hoping that his psychopathic inclinations would abate. Finding no respite in the North, he visited a psychiatrist who suggested that he marry a white woman and that such a union would lessen his compulsion to kill white men. Lester married a white woman and settled in California, but Lester, like Lee, could not find employment for which he had been trained. Prejudice and discrimination, combined with his compulsion to kill whites, had warped Lester's personality and rendered him insane. He had reached the stage where he was now

Sitting in his living room, plotting the murder of Lewis Foster. McKinley knew that he was insane, but the knowledge did not terrify him because he was through fighting it. He would kill this white man he resolved, and if that didn't do any good he would kill himself.

Lee's and Lester's experiences are the same, for Lee also believed that he had been "oppressed by white people to the point of criminal compulsion." But where Lee becomes passive and internalizes his fear, Lester becomes aggressive and seeks release in the external world. (It should be noted, however, that while Lester plans murder, he never commits murder.) Lester is Lee driven to extremes by a society which humiliates and degrades him. Lindquist maintains that Lee and Lester share many impulses, but that Lee lacks Lester's craze "only because his [Lee's] despair has not yet become so deep." I contend that Lester's desperation is no greater than Lee's. Lester is Lee, a psychotic Lee who objectifies his psychopathic tendencies.

In addition to Lester's and Lee's traumatic experiences there is other evidence of doubling in their moral traits and in their social stance which yokes the two characters together. For example, both Lester and Lee are college educated, and because of their education, both have a tendency to be contemptuous of Blacks who are not educated. Both are under-employed, both are propositioned by Lewis Foster to betray the union; both refused. Both are embroiled in domestic problems because they cannot meet their obligations. And finally, both are destroyed because they refuse to be less than men in the white man's world. These parallels are not accidental. They are indicative of the doubling technique found throughout the novel.

That Lester is Lee's alter ego is exemplified in yet another manner. Lee sees himself as an honest individual surrounded by unprincipled Communists and industrialists. Lee projects this attribute of honesty to Lester. He conceives of Lester as the only source of truth in a jungle of conspirators. When attacks and counter-attacks are made by both Communists and industrialists and Lee loses his perspective, he turns to Lester. On several occasions he tries to reach McKinley because he believes that McKinley would be sympathetic and honest. He "was positive that Lester knew the truth" and would help him to gain a new perspective of his dilemma. Lee's projecting one of his own character traits on to Lester and his expecting sympathy from Lester suggest that there is a common bond between the two characters.

Luther McGregor is the other component of the character, Lee. Where Lester is an extension of Lee, Luther becomes the opposing self. Where Lee has an affinity for Lester he despises Luther. But Luther has the intestinal fortitude to act—a quality which is lacking in Lee and to some extent in Lester.

Little is known of Luther McGregor except that he is from Mississippi where he has spent time on a chain gang. A former WPA worker, he was sunning himself on a Los Angeles beach when a rich white woman picked him up and took him home as her paramour. Another white woman, Mollie, stole him from his first lover.

McGregor is not only a gigolo, he is a card-carrying Communist and a part-time union organizer. He is neither handsome nor intelligent. Mollie refers to him as her Caliban with a pygmy brain. He is further described by the omnipotent narrator in this manner:

Fully as tall as Lee, his six-foot height was lost in the thickness of his torso and the width of his muscular shoulders that sloped like an ape's from which hung arms a good foot longer than the average man's. His weird, long-fingered hands of enormous size and grotesque shape … hung placidly at his side, and his flat splayed feet seemed planted firmly in the mud. He wore a belted light-tan camel's hair overcoat over a white turtle-neck sweater above which his flat-featured African face seemed blacker than the usual connotation of the word.

Lee and Luther also differ in their racial assumptions. Lee believes his color is a handicap, and as a result, he rejects his Blackness. Luther, on the other hand, accepts himself for what he is. He takes advantage of his racial features. Arriving at the conclusion that all the white world saw in him was a "nigger," Luther becomes a professional Black who insists that whites will have to pay to exploit his Blackness. He informs Lee:

Look, man, as long as I is black and ugly white folks gonna hate my guts. They gonna look at me and see a nigger. All of 'em Foster, and the white folks in the party and the white women in the bed, but I is always gonna make it pay off, man … 'Cause I is gonna be they nigger and they proof and make 'em pay for it.

Luther is also different from Lee in his attitude toward white women. Lee deserted his Black wife, Ruth, for Jackie Folks, a white friend who was really a Communist agent sent to gain his confidence and to sabotage his plans for the union. To Lee, Jackie was a lady, his "immortal woman." Luther, on the other hand, saw no saving grace in the white female. Molly, his paramour, wanted him for one reason and he realized that fact. He was her "air hammer," he "fire and bone" and steel-driving man.

On the narrative level Luther demonstrates all of the character traits Lee detests. Luther is unscrupulous. He is cunning. He is anti-social. He hates society and he doesn't hide his hate. Industry attempts to manipulate him, but he outmaneuvers industry instead. He would brutalize and/or kill anyone who threatens his well-being, and his cynical attitude towards his women borders on hate. On the psychological level, however, all of the traits that Luther exhibits are present in Lee. Although Lee does not verbalize his thoughts, his animosities towards Foster and the industrial complex are just as strong as Luther's. And like Luther, he is always thinking how he could manipulate them to his advantage. While he does not release his aggression on those whites who affront or humiliate him, he releases his hostilities on his wife by beating and raping her. He does not want to admit it, but he realizes, as Luther said, that he is just a stud and a pimp to his white lover. For even Jackie admits to Lee: "I'd be your white whore and make you a hundred thousand dollars and the proudest black man who ever lived." Physically, and on the narrative level, then, Lee and Luther appear to be different, but the psychic similarities suggest that they share, conjointly, the same thoughts, the same emotions. And it is these thoughts and emotions which suggest that Luther is a decomposition. He is Lee's opposing self.

Another suggestion of doubling is found in Luther's behavior towards Lee. Luther's familiarity with the protagonist intimates a foreknowledge of Lee. On their initial meeting Luther presents himself as though the introduction should remind Lee of past experiences. Lee's hesitation causes Luther to insist: "You know me! I'm Luther, man, I'm Luther." Luther further implies that he had known Lee for a long time. He explained that it was he who caused the union to hire Lee. When Luther drives Lee home he continues this behavior. He stalks into Lee's house and pokes around as though he lived there, as though he were Lee. Luther's acts might be attributed to his uncouthness. I suggest, however, that Luther's prescience is an indication of Himes' double motif.

Still another example of doubling is evidenced in Luther's killing of Paul Dixon. Paul and several other deputies, under the aegis of Foster, had brutally beaten Lee when he refused to accept money to betray the union. As a result of this encounter Lee wanted to kill Paul. (Lee's thoughts are conveyed to us through Ruth, his wife.) However, it is Luther who, in their second encounter with Paul, stabbed him to death when he, Luther, suspected Paul of duping them out of their fair share of the loot. In killing Paul, Luther becomes Lee's defense against external aggression in that he acts as a surrogate for Lee.

So far, we have limited our discussion to Lee and his doubles. However, in looking at the protagonist and his components, it becomes obvious that certain parallels exist between them and their creator which suggest that doubling exists between the component character and the novelist, Chester Himes.

For example, all three of the characters are emasculated and eventually destroyed either physically or psychologically. Luther McGregor is shot to death by the police, and when the novel ends policemen are about to shoot Lee Gordon. Lester McKinley, who has reached that state of complete social alienation and mental and emotional instability, literally runs from Los Angeles. Himes had the same experiences in California as his characters did. He maintains that when he went to California he was full of hopes. He had great aspirations, but race prejudice in Los Angeles prevented him from realizing his potential, and not being able to realize his goals he became bitter and frustrated. When he went to California he was emotionally stable. He states, however, that when he left he was shattered.

All three of the characters either conceived of murder or committed murder because of racial oppression. And Himes, like his creations, affirms that he not only believed himself to be capable of murder but that he might be forced to commit murder in order to defend his honor or his life. All three of the characters had stormy affairs with white women. Himes' first autobiography, The Quality of Hurt, seems to be concerned, for the most part, with his disastrous affairs with white women.

In addition to the similarities Himes shares with the characters in general, there are psychic features and/or social experiences that Himes shares with each of the fragmented characters. Luther, for example, is given to bursts of violent temper, a trait demonstrated in his attitude toward his paramour, Mollie, and his killing of Paul Dixon. And Himes said that while he was living in Spain, he suffered from "blind fits of rage in which it seems my brain [had] been demented." Luther spent time on a Mississippi chain gang and Himes spent time in the Ohio State Penitentiary. Like Lester, Himes had attended college, and like his intellectual double, he could not find a job for which he had been trained. (During a period of three years in California Himes says he had twenty-four jobs. Twenty-two of these assignments were as a common laborer or a domestic, and two were semi-professional.) Also like Lester, Himes suffered emotionally because of his inability to find suitable employment.

Himes states that he suffered from periods of blankness, periods during which he could not account for his actions. Lee, the protagonist of Lonely Crusade, suffers from like attacks. Himes was jealous of his wife's success. He says:

It hurt me for my wife to have a better job than I did and be respected and included by her white coworkers, besides rubbing elbows with many well-to-do blacks of the Los Angeles middle-class who would not touch me with a ten-foot pole. That was the beginning of the dissolution of our marriage.

In the novel, Lee, the protagonist, and Ruth, his wife, have the self-same problem. Lee cannot find employment while his wife has a white-collar post. Because of her working with whites, Lee accuses her of conspiring with them to emasculate him. In short, Lee's marriage, like Himes', disintegrates because his spouse has a better job.

All three of the characters, individually and collectively, have experiences that parallel Himes' own experiences. Further, all three display character traits common to their creator. It is fair to conjecture, then, that the characters, individually and as a composite represent aspects of Chester Himes and that they function as surrogates for Himes. Like Richard Wright, Himes felt the need to release his aggression, but not wanting to vent his hostilities on society, he created combative characters and lived vicariously through them.

By using characters as surrogates for himself, Himes probably purged himself of those emotional tensions that plagued him. Within the novel, however, the doubling technique has other values. By creating the composite character, Himes gives us a triple view of the effects of discrimination on the Black male. Robert Rogers stated that one aspect of doubling deals with the alliances and the divisions among the Id, the Ego and the Super Ego. If we conceive of Lee as representing the Ego, the balance between the two extremes, and Luther as the Id, and Lester as the Super Ego, we might conclude that when racial pressures affect us at the primal level we could react violently as Luther McKinley did. When they affect us at the level of the higher self we could attempt to control our aggression, but in so doing, we could become psychotic as Lester McKinley did. When they affect us on the level of the ego, we could become like Lee, spiritually and physically emasculated.

Finally, the doubling technique preserves the integrity of the protagonist, Lee Gordon. Our moral sensibilities would be stunned if Lee behaved as Luther did. On the other hand, Lee would become the object of pity if he behaved as McKinley did. However, through the technique of doubling, the integrity of the protagonist is preserved and Himes still has the opportunity to bring before the reader aspects of Lee's thoughts and actions. The doubling technique results in complexity of structure in the novel. Further, it intensifies Himes' protest theme by giving us not one but three examples of the effects of racism on the Black male.