In the novel Go tell it on the mountain by James Baldwin, at first glance, Gabriel is easy to dislike and easier yet to misinterpret. When the reader is introduced to Gabriel, he remains unnamed through the descriptive perspectives of his children, John, Roy, and Sara, and his wife, Elizabeth. We discover that Gabriel apparently endorses the popular, biblical notion of family structure at that time which dictated that the male has the power in the family. Gabriel interprets the father's role as protector: to feed, to clothe, to provide shelter, and to insure the holy status of his family's souls even if he must beat them into compliance. Any deed he does not approve he quickly classifies as wicked or sinful and, therefore, prohibited. In all matters, he holds his family's will subservient to his own. Disputes with his wife or children are often resolved by physical violence which he believes is not only condoned but mandated by God, and he enjoys his position as reverend, even though John views him as merely a "holy handyman" who is called upon when no one else is available.
Gabriel is an extremely important character in the novel, albeit not a complex one; he is more symbolic than realistic, and as such his character may appear to be flat and somewhat static because the reader does not see many sides to him, and he does not seem to change much throughout the novel. In terms of plot, Gabriel affects every character in the book. He is the unifying element that they all have in common. Thematically, Gabriel symbolizes first generation African Americans of former-slave parents, born free; therefore, he exhibits the heinous effects that the American slavery experience had on the generations of victims that followed the emancipation, the war, and the reconstruction periods.
We learn that most importantly Gabriel is, as we all are, the product of his environment(s) and his experiences: He is all of the potential he possessed in youth percolated through a lifetime of hate and hostility, of unfulfilled ambitions and dreams, of unrealized hopes and expectations, of heartbreak and humiliation, of being demeaned and devalued. In short, he is a product of a lifetime of being a black man in a racist America.
Gabriel is a strange combination of contradictory expectations, values, and behaviors; a situation in which a behavior does not actually demonstrate a value typically or ostensibly associated with it. As a young adult, for example, Gabriel's wild nights were undertaken in an apparent spirit of self-indulgence, as much as one can be self-indulgent and oppressed at the same time. Again, his refusal to take responsibility for his actions appears to be another of Gabriel's conspicuous characteristics; for example, he sees the short affair with Ester and her subsequent pregnancy as a consequence of her manipulating him.
All in all, Gabriel has few redeeming qualities. He shuns his responsibilities; he abuses his wife and children; he is arrogant; he lacks empathy with others; and he lacks courage to live the good life of which he is fully cognizant. His lack of character as the reader sees him is mitigated only by his experiences with American racism, which seems to have produced him.
