Critically evaluate the role of the protagonist in Go Tell It in the Mountain

John tries to forge his own personal identity outside of his community. Described as a ‘black Bildungsroman’, Go Tell It ‘is a young protagonists struggle to invent himself’. Baldwin establishes John’s struggle for his construction of self (and foreshadows the journey John is to take in attainment of it) from the opening line:
Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father. It had been said so often that John, without ever thinking about it, had come to believe it himself. Not until the morning of his fourteenth birthday did he really begin to think about it, and by then it was already too late.
 Chosen for him by ‘everyone’ else, John recognises that the ‘life awaiting him’ is not his own. His reluctance to partake in this pre-determined life is suggested by his persistent silence and lack of presence in the church space. Baldwin ‘crafts John’s struggle as one of silence, unable to offer his testimony and unable to find power over his voice’; struggling against the choice of acceptance of the church or acceptance of himself and his homosexual desires, John instead repeatedly watches his congregation from afar. He is a silent figure amongst the loudness of the ‘saints, his mother and his father’. He watches ‘the faces, and the weightless bodies and listened to the timeless cries.’ John is also overtly aware that there exists no place for him in his community: ‘there was the back door, the dark stairs, and the kitchen or the basement’, sadly ‘this world was not for John’. John’s incessant watching of his congregation and his lack of physical place within its doors stems from his inability to feel connected to them and the ‘holy life’ that the ‘cross demand[s]’ from him.