The apples, as traditional symbol of temptation, represent the false promises of equality and integration whites offer to blacks in order to keep them submissive. Ironically, the symbolic, sexual union between Clay and Lula leads to the victimization and murder of Clay.

The action focuses almost exclusively on Lula, a white woman, and Clay, a black man, who both ride the subway in New York City. Clay’s name is symbolic of the malleability of black identity and black manhood.

Dutchman presents a stylized encounter that illustrates hatred between blacks and whites in America as well as the political and psychological conflicts facing black American men in the 1960s. The play won an Obie Award as best American Off-Broadway play of 1964; it was made into a film in 1967.

Dutchman is a 1967 British drama film directed by Anthony Harvey and starring Shirley Knight and Al Freeman, Jr. It was based on the 1964 play Dutchman by Amiri Baraka (aka Le Roi Jones) who wrote the screenplay adaptation.

Like Clay, Lula is both real and symbolic. Symbolically, she represents white America and its attempted seduction and consequent destruction of black manhood by assimilation or annihilation; she also represents Eve to Clay’s Adam, eating and offering him an apple just as the biblical Eve did.

In Amiri Baraka’s play Dutchman , the white and black passengers symbolize the inability of the individual to make substantial difference in race relations in the United States through their inaction and complicity.

1 capitalized. a archaic : a member of any of the Germanic peoples of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the Low Countries. b : a native or inhabitant of the Netherlands. c : a person of Dutch descent.

In his decision to speak honestly about his feelings despite his attempts to assimilate, Clay breaks the mold made for him as an assimilated black man, and therefore is punished. Lula’s seduction and murder of Clay is meant to “expose the victimization of the socially assimilated African American” (Walker 238).

The act of murder is significant because Lula kills Clay though she is sure that he will not do any harm to her or to whites in general. This signifies that even if blacks remain peaceful, the murderous impulse inside the white man’s subconscious will make him victimize blacks in order to maintain white superiority.

Dutchman takes place in a steaming subway—“the flying underbelly of the city,” Mr. Baraka calls it—a metaphor for the subconscious. The short, violent drama could be a hot, sexy dream that turns into a nightmare.

the Netherlands
A Dutchman is a male member of the Dutch people, native to the Netherlands or descendant of one.