More Than a Story

I completely agree with Charles Warner's argument that “[Goophered] adapts the folk practice of "masking" to counteract the racial stereotypes held by its predominantly white audience.” We talked today in class a lot about who the audience of Our Nig was, and why that contributed to the unsuccessfulness of the novel at first. I think that by recognizing that his stories are going to be read primarily by white people that he used this technique of "masking" to say a lot more than what appears on the surface of The Goophered Grapevine. By simply putting this second story in the larger story, Chestnutt gives his audience the idea of this African American, Uncle Julius, as entertaining the white folks (which in that time would have been more acceptable than just having a story about an African American). He also makes the story quite humorous even though there are many dark things happening in the story, which again is the authors way of making a larger statement about the society and the lives that African American slaves held, while still entertaining his readers. The story includes that the slaves had to walk for ten miles just to eat some of Mars Dugal's grapes, which he mentions on a very light note, but in reality, having to walk ten miles just for some decent food is quite sad. He also goes into some detail about how the white folks tried to catch the slaves that were sneaking into Dugal's vineyard, which I think included setting animal traps and the use of guns - about as inhumane a way to stop a man from eating your produce as possible. The last thing I found interesting was that when Dugal found out what happened to Henry when he rubbed the sap on his head, he completely exploited it for his own gain. This, again, was written almost humorously where Dugal could sell him in the spring and buy him back for nearly nothing in the winter, but I think that makes it stand out all the more. Had this story been written from a serious African American's point of view I don't think that anyone would have read it, but the fact that its being told to the white narrator from an old goofy black man, made it a better story for a broader audience. I see this entire story as a much more serious one than initially meets the eye, as it is a giant comment on the brutal lives that slaves had back then, and their everyday struggle to survive.

On a final note, something else that I found interesting was that in The Goophered Grapevine and The Sheriff's Children, Chesnutt includes mulattos. Clearly, this implies in both instances that a slave owner had sexual affairs with a female slave (probably forced) which I believe was strongly frowned upon back in the 1800s.. This again just goes back to the cruelty and harsh environments that the African Americans had to put up with in that time.