Character Analysis
The Birthday Boy
Heeere's Johnny! John's a fourteen-year-old African-American kid who lives in Harlem with his parents, brother, and two sisters. They're poor, they all work hard, and they live under the tyrannical rule of the father, Gabriel. John's the oldest and sort of a goody-goody, in contrast to his wild-child brother, Roy. The whole story takes place on his fourteenth birthday, which is important for a few reasons.
First off, when Johnny wakes up he wonders:
"Will anyone remember?" For it had happened, once or twice, that his birthday had passed entirely unnoticed, and no one had said "Happy Birthday, Johnny," or given him anything—not even his mother. (1.1.24).
Poor Johnny! This possibility, that his birthday will be forgotten tells us a lot about this character and his relationships with the people around him. That is, that he's pretty neglected… and in serious need of cake.
Second of all, the birthday is a day that gives him some freedom and authority. He uses the birthday money his mom gives him (she didn't forget after all) to go watch a movie that his father wouldn't approve of (which, to be fair, would be any movie):
Having once decided to enter, he did not look back at the street again for fear that one of the saints might be passing and, seeing him, might cry out his name and lay hands on him to drag him back. (1.1.123)
So Johnny's old enough to make the decision to rebel, but he's still not rebellious enough to not care about anybody finding out. He's a secretive renegade, kind of tottering on the edge of adulthood… but not quite there yet.
Finally, his birthday takes on a special significance when, that evening, he is converted at the church. Overcome by the power of God, he falls into a deep trance and passes through some terrible visions before coming out the other side.
The other churchgoers take this as evidence that he is now grown, calling it a double birthday:
"You hear that?" said Sister Price, with wonder. "The Lord done saved that boy's soul on his birthday!"
"Well, he got two birthdays now," smiled Sister McCandless, "[…] one in the flesh, and one in the Spirit." (3.1.142-43)
Johnny's rebellion also comes to fruition through his conversion. His father really wasn't exactly rooting for him while he was overcome (which is kind of crazy, because his father is supposed to be uber-Godly) but Johnny pulled through and can face Gabriel like an equal now, instead of like a scared little kid.
Stepchild
It takes a while for the secret to come out, but come out it does. Johnny is not Gabriel's biological son. He doesn't know it, but we do (dramatic irony alert!), which makes it really frustrating and heartbreaking for him. Why would his own Daddy dislike him so much?
But Gabriel gets to join the ranks of the approximately million and half examples of evil stepparents out there. The reason Gabriel takes up the mantle of Evil StepDaddy is this: when Gabriel was young, he dreamed that God would make his line holy. His own biological sons, Roy and Royal, don't seem to be too likely to fulfill it, but John does. So John is a walking, talking suggestion that maybe God didn't live up to his promise to Gabriel… or maybe that Gabriel's dream was, well, just a dream.
This contrast between John's holiness and the Roys' rebellion is noticed by everybody, making matters worse with Gabriel. Sister McCandless says that John will "'make it to the Kingdom before any of them, you wait and see,'" (1.1.267), and when Roy calls Gabriel a "black bastard," Gabriel looks at John with such hatred that:
John thought for that moment that his father believed the words had come from him, his eyes were so wild and depthlessly malevolent, and his mouth was twisted into such a snarl of pain. (1.1.188)
So every negative thing that Roy does is somehow transferred to John in Gabriel's eyes. John pays the price for his brother's sins, and Gabriel uses John as a whipping-boy. And if that kind of treatment doesn't affect a guy's character, we don't know what will. John ends up meek on the outside but raging on the inside as a result of his father's abuse.
Secret Longings
John deeply wants his father's acceptance, but there's a part of him that knows he'll never get it. While John doesn't know the truth about his origins (he thinks Gabriel is his biological father), he has a secret that he knows will never be accepted: he is into guys.
While he doesn't come out in the novel (remember that it takes place in 1935 and was published in 1953, when staying in the closet was par for the course), he doesn't exactly hide his desire from the reader:
In the school lavatory, alone, thinking of the boys, older, bigger, braver, who made bets with each other as to whose urine could arch higher, he had watched in himself a transformation of which he would never dare to speak. (1.1.26)
The fact that he won't "dare to speak" of it means he knows that it's unacceptable in the world he's living in. He calls it "a sin that was hard to forgive" (1.1.26). So John's homosexual desire is something that he knows he must hide and that will cause conflict with his family and church if he acts on it.
John seems to have a special crush on Elisha, the preacher's nephew, who is decidedly not gay. After the big fight at home, John is angry, but when Elisha shows up to help him clean up the church he turns his frown upside down: "He felt unaccustomedly bold and light-hearted; the arrival of Elisha had caused his mood to change" (1.1.213). Basically John has hearts popping out of his eyes.
Of course, John knows that Elisha isn't really an option for him. In church one day, Father James makes Elisha and his girlfriend, Ella Mae, kneel down and ask forgiveness in front of everyone for getting too close to each other. John realizes that day what is expected of him:
If they came together again it would be in wedlock. They would have children and raise them in the church.
This was what was meant by a holy life, this is what the way of the cross demanded. It was somehow on that Sunday, a Sunday shortly before his birthday, that John first realized that this was the life awaiting him—realized it consciously, as something no longer far off, but imminent, coming closer day by day. (1.1.21-22)
Ella Mae and Elisha are set straight on a path that leads to marriage and a baby carriage. As a gay man in the 1930s, that's not exactly an option for John… unless he decides to stay in the closet forever. The example of Ella Mae and Elisha shows John that he is to ignore his own desires and conform to the rules of his society. Repression, much?
John Grimes' Timeline