Archetypal Figures in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” by Anderson David L.;

Author:Anderson, David L.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Kent State University Press

Robert Johnson’s “Come On in My Kitchen” and “Hell Hound on My Trail”

Robert Johnson (1911–1938), an American blues musician and songwriter from Mississippi, has had a disproportionally remarkable influence on world music, considering the relatively small number of songs he was able to record during his short life.2 A variety of explanations for his enduring popularity have been put forward, none entirely satisfactory. One theory that might partially account for his popularity might be that he had an intuitive access of ancient archetypes.

As the differing lyrics and organization of the two recorded takes of “Come On in My Kitchen” reveal, a blues song is often a variable collection of sometimes related verses. Nevertheless, in a few strokes and with a rolling chorus, Johnson, a man probably free of significant literary influence, hits on some of the key archetypes. The speaker addresses what we can easily deem a woman on trail. The “Come On” of title itself is an offer of shelter, just as the reference to a kitchen is an offer of food, two key elements of the stranger archetype. The approach of winter in the long term and the trembling leaves, both suggestive of storms, mirror the metaphorical and literal so common in man/woman-on-trail narratives already discussed.

In another well-known song, “Hell Hound on My Trail,” Johnson develops the man-on-trail theme with an emotional intensity that is shocking, though not uncharacteristic of his recorded performances.3 The title phrase is repeated three chilling times at the end of the first stanza. It’s a difficult stanza for the next three to follow, and they only elaborate on the horror of the first. With the hellhound, Johnson introduces an archetypal nemesis figure in his first stanza. On an obvious level the hellhound was a valid enough symbol for either oppression or just plain old garden-variety death. The third stanza introduces another (nonarchetypal) image—that of “hot foot powder” spread “around my door”—an image of the necessity of moving, ostensibly to stay ahead of death, which could take frightening forms for a young black traveling musician alone and on the move in the 1930s south. The form is lyric and not narrative, but some of the traditional pieces are in place, most notably the pursuit, which here is both mythic and horrific.

By contrast, the second and fourth stanzas work with images of inertness. In the second stanza, the song depicts a Christmas evening and day, idling away the hours with a lover. The fourth stanza depicts a rising wind rustling the leaves, suggesting the approach of something sinister. The portrait drawn in these two stanzas emerges, by contrast with the first and third, as that of persons disturbingly inert in the approach of danger. Having established the horrific pursuit, his stopping to enjoy a Christmas day and to spend idle time with a lover creates a tension, for one cannot imagine the hellhound stopping during its pursuit. The tension and instability, of course, match well with the social and personal conditions a man like Johnson, an itinerant musician, would have had to confront.

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