A Premeditated Murder of Clay by Lula—On Amiri Baraka’s Play Dutchman

Frontiers of Theatre Studies

FTS, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2026, pp.37-50.

Print ISSN: 3106-8073; Online ISSN: 3106-8081

Journal homepage: https://www.ftsjournal.com

DOI: https://doi.org/10.64058/fts260105pmcla

A Premeditated Murder of Clay by Lula

— On Amiri Baraka’s Play Dutchman

Wu Zhaofeng

Abstract: Amiri Baraka’s play, Dutchman, with an inverted biblical motif, could be viewed as a mix of the Theatre of the Absurd and the Realist Drama. Set in the mythic frame of the creation story in Genesis of the Bible, Clay’s counterpart, Lula, could be interpreted as both Eve and Satan in disguise. To be exact, Dutchman could be regarded as a premeditated murder of the black man, Clay, by the white devil, Lula. This article endeavors to analyze the premeditatedness of the murder and discuss whether Clay betrays his people and deserves death by dressing in the middle-class way. Such a plot may not necessarily reflect Baraka’s essentialist perception of black identity. However, it does vent his desperation and indignation of the existential plight of the black people in the modern white middle-class dominant America, which renders his revolutionary move from the white community and his carrying out the Black Power Movement and the Modern Black Convention Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, this paper discusses the significance of the premeditatedness of the plot in the construction of the black nationality during the Black Power Movement.

Keywords: Dutchman, premeditatedness, existential plight, interracial hatred, black nationality

Author Biography: Wu Zhaofeng, Associate Professor, Hubei University of Economics, and Ph.D. candidate, Central China Normal University. Research Area: English and American Literature and Shakespeare studies. E-mail: wuzhaofeng@hbue.edu.cn.

题目：卢拉对克莱有预谋的杀害－论阿米里·巴拉卡的戏剧《荷兰人号》

摘要：阿米里·巴拉卡的剧作《荷兰人号》以倒置的圣经母题为核心，可被视为荒诞派戏剧与现实主义戏剧的混合。该剧以《圣经·创世记》中创世故事的神话框架为背景，黑人角色克莱的对应者卢拉，可被解读为伪装的夏娃与撒旦。确切而言，《荷兰人》可被视为白人卢拉对黑人克莱的蓄意谋杀。本文旨在分析这起谋杀的预谋性，并探讨克莱是否因以中产阶级方式着装而背叛了自己的族群并死有余辜。这一情节未必反映巴拉卡对黑人身份的本质主义认知，但它确实宣泄了他对白人中产阶级主导的现代美国中黑人生存困境的绝望与愤慨—这促使他做出了脱离白人社区的革命性举动，并在20世纪60至70年代开展“黑人权力运动”与“现代黑人大会运动”。最后，本文探讨了该情节的预谋性在“黑人权力运动”时期对构建黑人美国身份的意义。