Joe Turner's Come and Gone

The shiny man is the “One Who Goes Before and Shows the Way” and appears to Bynum in a mystical vision (15). The vision starts when Bynum meets a man on the road who offers to show him the meaning of life. Bynum is looking to see the shiny man again, this time to affirm his identity and know that he has “left his mark on life” (15). At the end of the play, after freeing himself from the weight of his past, Loomis becomes the shiny man, “having found his song, the song of self-sufficiency” and Bynum’s search is complete (86).

Song is the metaphor for identity as established in Bynum’s vision of the “shiny man” who leads him to the “Binding Song” and his purpose in life. Everyone has their own song, and they need to find it on their own. Loomis lost his way because he forgot his song in the trauma of being kidnapped by Joe Turner. He regains his identity at the end of the play when he finds his song again.