According with Perkins, an Assistant Professor of English at Prince George’s Community College in Maryland, he believes that the novel “Go Tell it on the Mountain” is divided into three dissimilar parts. To begin with the first section, “The Seventh Day”, which sets the readers to the principal action of the novel. Also calls John initiation in manhood and discover of self in the closing section.
Later on, Perkins describes the other section from the book called “The Prayers of the Saints”, focused on the history of John’s family. The author of this article reminds the reader that argues and different narrative voices in this section create “a technical fault” in the novel. The reason for that is because John does not know that the lives of his aunt, his mother and his stepfather. Simply the reader does. Yet, all the stories combined seemed to have the same options and problems John is now facing on his journey to selfhood.
Moreover, in the second section, John’s family members are now praying for comfort, sense of communal, identity as they, like John, are struggling the same obstacles of racism, poverty and failed relationships that are impeding their search for selfhood. Florence’s prayer starts the section in order to fight against the same weaknesses that John is dealing with. As she reminds and revealed how Gabriel had controlled her life while a child.
As a result, Perkins says “Baldwin's juxtaposition of narrative voice in Go Tell It on the Mountain provides no easy answers for John as he struggles to rise above racism, poverty, and family tensions in order to define himself and his place in his world. In his successful merging of structure and thematic import, Baldwin illustrates the difficulties inherent in the quest for selfhood. Perkins, Wendy, Novels for Students, Vol. 4, Gale, 1998”

The behavior demonstrated by some of the characters of this novel may portray traits from a hypocritical society. Although John’s father, Gabriel, appears to be a motivational and charismatic leader in his congregation, he fails to act in the same manner with his children at home. He appears to undervalue his son John in several aspects, which may have helped John to question himself about his own value as an individual. John’s father is not forgiving and he is concerned about teaching his son to learn the Bible in order to become his successor in his church; however, he fails to teach by example the true meaning of the Bible. He often arrives home and does not bother to greet his family members, as he is tired. Gabriel also appears to treat his woman with a level of superiority and machismo. Furthermore, Gabriel still seemed to have prejudice against White individuals, as he still thought about the long years of slavery in which his family had suffered and lost family members to this cause. In fact, when John received an award for writing in his English class, Gabriel immediately told John to return the award to his professor, as he believed that the award might have been part of a different scheme or joke played against African Americans.

Segregation is not only present between Black and White individuals in this novel; however, even African Americans had a few issues with other African Americans, as some of them considered themselves more worthy of going to heaven due to their churchgoing activities. The individuals who went to church believed to be superior, as every activity that they engaged on was church-related. When John wrote an essay about the history of New York, which included extensive research and a long writing process, his father did not seemed to be pleased with his accomplishment, and interrogated John’s reasons for writing about such a topic. In Gabriel’s mind, John should have written about something more meaningful such as a Bible story. Both Gabriel and other churchgoers appeared to preach Bible scriptures that were read during the congregation, but were not effectively put into practice in their daily lives. Gabriel showed no respect for his wife’s thoughts, and he constantly thought with her regarding John’s lack of interest in becoming a pastor. Gabriel’s anger and anguish towards White individuals is understandable because of everything that he had suffered; however, he was not able to forgive and forget, as several scriptures of the Bible advise.