Dave's Neckliss Literary Elements

Dialect story; Plantation fiction; Short story

Frame story: Former slave plantation in post-Civil War, 19th-century North Carolina. Interior story: Same plantation before the Civil War

The story is constructed as a dual narrative with two points of view. The story itself is narrated by John, the white Northern owner of the former slave plantation. The interior story is relayed by John as a spoken word dialect told by Uncle Julius, a former slave.

The tone and mood of John’s framing narration that opens and closes the story is one of benevolent racial superiority and tolerance. The inner story told by Uncle Julius is delivered in a mood of wistful sadness at an unpleasant memory. The overall authorial tone is ironic as the point of the story Julius relays to his white guests is completely missed by John and only slightly intuited by his wife.

As a combination of frame and inner story, Julius is the protagonist who is having a bit of fun with John, who acts as a friendly antagonist. Within the story told by Julius, the protagonist is clearly Dave and the very unfriendly antagonist is clearly Walker, the plantation master.

The only true conflict occurs within the inner story and it takes place between Mars Walker and Dave when the master wrongfully accuses the slave of stealing food.

The actual thief confesses, but Dave hangs himself in the smokehouse.

Foreshadowing occurs when John, watching Julius voraciously consume slice after slice of ham, notices the old man suddenly stop short as if overwhelmed by a memory as a tear rolls down his cheek and lands on the slice of ham on the plate below.

Understatement occurs when John observes with a strange sense of curiosity that Uncle Julius has never been known to exhibit “any regrets for the Arcadian joyousness and irresponsibility” of his life as a plantation slave.

The entire story of Dave thinking he has turned into a ham alludes to the Biblical story of Noah and the mythic origination that Noah’s disgraced son Ham became the father to all the black races of the planet.

The author reveals his gift for satirizing the predominant belief of post-Civil War white Americans that the pre-Civil War South was a nostalgically happy dreamland for all involved with John’s descriptive set-up for Julius preparing to relate his tale from the period: “There was an autumnal languor in the air, and a dreamy haze softened the dark green of the distant pines and the deep blue of the Southern sky.”

The central paradox of Dave’s story is that even though he is forced to wear the ham around his neck as a punishment that becomes utterly humiliating to him, once the punishment is over and the ham removed, Dave continues to replicate the “neckliss” with a piece of wood.

John’s furtively spying on Uncle Julius as he consumes his own ham is subtly paralleled to Mars Walker watching over the plantation’s food supply to ensure that none of it is stolen by the slaves.

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One of the main themes of the story is one that is prevalent throughout all of Chesnutt’s plantation stories told by Uncle Julius and it is really more an example of the opposite of personification. To personify something is to endow non-human entities with human qualities. Dave’s believing that he is actually turning into a ham is consistent with many of Chesnutt’s other slave characters becoming de-personified. Characters in other stories are turned into trees, animals, and even take on the season qualities of a grapevine as part of the author’s persistent motif that reveals how slavery is a system dependent upon dehumanization.