The Illusion of Safety in William Gardner Smith’s “The Stone Face”

William Gardner Smith’s The Stone Face, as I have written about over the past few posts, revolves around the tension that Simeon feels about living in Paris as the Civil Rights Movement occurs back in the United States. Simeon’s conflict arose partly from Smith’s own experiences as an expatriate in France but also from the experiences of other African America expatriate writes in France such as Richard Wright and James Baldwin. In “Alas, Poor Richard,” Baldwin directly addresses this tension following the death of Wright. After an African man joked with Baldwin and said that Wright viewed himself as a white man, Baldwin began to think about the comment. Baldwin comments that Paris allowed Wright to live in Paris “exactly as he would have lived, had he been a white man, here, in America.”

Paris provided Wright a refuge from the racism and oppression they encountered in the United States, but Baldwin questions what Wright ultimately gave up for that “safety and comfort.” Baldwin concludes that the price Wright paid for this “illusion of safety” was “a turning away from, ignorance of, all of the powers of darkness.” The illusory comfort of France provides a shield from having to look, if one chose not to, back at the United States as well as France’s ongoing racism. This is the tension Simeon feels in The Stone Face. He chooses to…