Essay Questions

Chesnutt’s story is one that becomes ever more complex upon each new reading. How does it subtly link to the racist interpretation of the story of Noah?

One of the most abominable historical legends associated with ideologically unsound interpretations of Biblical scripture contends that following the Great Deluge, the black “race” descended from Noah’s son Ham. Noah had punished Ham for transgressions and therefore this association connoted a genetic strain of inferiority. Dave’s descent into madness to the point of claiming he actually has been turned into a ham provides symbolic context for this particular level of complexity to the story.

How is the use of dialect in the story told by Uncle Julius essential to the author’s larger purposes extant to the narrative itself?

Trying to read any randomly chosen line from the story Julius relates to John and Annie is an exercise in patience and phonetics:

“Mars Walker say it wuz des ez he 'spected: he didn' b'lieve in dese yer readin' en prayin' niggers; it wuz all 'pocrisy, en sarve' Mars Dugal' right fer 'lowin' Dave ter be readin' books w'en it wuz 'g'in de law.”

Impressive, indeed, is the reader who can get through the entirety of the tale of Dave and the ham necklace without having to read any of the sentences twice. The irony, of course, is that the educated and well-spoken the reader, the more likely the trouble it will be to grasp what is being spoken. But then, that is the whole point. One of the cagiest authors in American history, Chesnutt knew exactly what he was doing because circumstances mandated that do exactly that. Intimately aware that—like Uncle Julius—he had to tell two stories at once, Chesnutt manipulates all literary talent to accomplish that. To have come right out and allow the hidden story Julius tells to be told on the surface would likely not have endeared Chesnutt to his white readership in quite the same way he enjoyed. Therefore, he was tasked not only with a subtly hiding the real meaning of his story, but also with forcing serious readers to slowly apprehend it through close attentive critically engaged reading as well as multiple attempts. The thick, sometimes almost painfully impenetrable dialect in which Julius renders his story within the story is one very effective method by which Chesnutt coerces the reader into paying closer attention.

What does the opening section of the framing device narrated by John subtly reveal about the state of race relations in American around the turn of the 20th century?

By any standard measurement of definition, John can only rightly be termed racist. That is not to say that he is “a racist” in the pejorative sense of the word’s associational qualities with jackbooted thugs spouting slogans of white supremacy as they march with torches through the streets. Nevertheless, John unwittingly reveals himself as being a fully conditioned member of white America who profoundly if not fervently believes in the genetic inferiority of blacks. Firstly, John openly admits without realizing it that he has bought into the plantation myth propagated by writers like Joel Chander Harris as he notes the seemingly curious quality about Julius that he “never indulged in any regrets for the Arcadian joyousness and irresponsibility” which many northerners like himself had been led to believe characterized slave life. But then John—who is, by all other accounts, a rather benevolently superior audience to the wild fantasies the old black man often tells—reveals his true darkness when he admits about Julius that “whether he even realized, except in a vague, uncertain way, his own degradation, I do not know.” And with that admission, Chesnutt subtly indicts without making explicit accusations practically his entire loyal readership in advancing and supporting the systemic racism at work in America.