The Crossroads as a Literary Symbol

How have writers, storytellers, and musicians explored the crossroads as a symbol in their work?

Know (knowledge):

• The symbol as a literary device and its uses
• The definition of the term “diaspora,” and the historical significance of the African diaspora
• The use of the crossroads as a symbol
• Yoruba traditional stories
• August Wilson and his work Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
• Blues Musician Robert Johnson and his song “Cross Road Blues”

Mastery Objective:

• Students will be able to identify a symbol in literature and consider the greater ideas and emotions a symbol evokes by examining how Yoruba culture, Robert Johnson, and August Wilson have used the symbol of the crossroads in their work.

In this lesson, students practice identifying and analyzing symbols in literature by exploring how the image of the crossroads has been used by writers within the African diaspora. Students examine three works: a Yoruba folk legend, Robert Johnson’s song “Cross Road Blues,” and August Wilson’s play Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Through their examination, they determine the various ways the image of the crossroads has been employed in literature. Finally, students create their own writing inspired by the collages of Romare Bearden which uses the symbol of the crossroads.

There are few things more common than a crossroads - each day we are likely to encounter them many times, without considering the experience. And yet, the image of the crossroads has been and remains a powerful symbol. To be at a crossroads often means to be at a place of uncomfortable indecision, at a place where one’s life path might forever change. The crossroads is also a site for encounters, where we come upon friends, strangers, and, in some stories, beings from  outside of our reality.

In diasporic communities, the symbol of the crossroads may possess even more significance: for those forcibly displaced from their homelands, traveling through crossroads evokes collective experiences that may define their history.

This lesson examines three literary accounts of the crossroads provided by writers of African descent. The earliest account comes from a Yoruba folktale from West Africa. In this account, Eshu, the Orisha or power that presides over the crossroads, plays a trick on two friends. In American Blues lore, guitarist Robert Johnson meets a being similar to Eshu -- often mischaracterized as the Devil -- on the crossroads. However, the lyrics to Johnson’s “Cross Road Blues” seem to offer a much more quotidian account of the distress of being a lone traveler on the crossroads. The supernatural and everyday aspects of the crossroads both appear in August Wilson’s play, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. The play revolves around a Black-owned boarding house sheltering people searching for their loved ones after Emancipation. In the drama, the crossroads represents both the daily difficulties confronted by formerly enslaved people in the United States, as well as a more metaphysical space where one is offered meaning, purpose, and possibility.