"Have some dinner, Uncle Julius?"
The opening words set the stage for the framing device with which this and Chesnutt’s other stories featuring Uncle Julius opened. The opening also situates the reality of African-American historical fiction at the time: it was almost always filtered through the lens of a white perspective in one way or another.
I saw him lay it on his plate; as he adjusted the knife and fork to cut it into smaller pieces, he paused, as if struck by a sudden thought, and a tear rolled down his rugged cheek and fell upon the slice of ham before him.
John is the narrator of the framing portion of the story and his watching Uncle Julius eat dinner through the window from his hammock outside is the stimulus for Julius to relate his story about Dave which makes up the actual narrative of the story.
His way of looking at the past seemed very strange to us; his view of certain sides of life was essentially different from ours. He never indulged in any regrets for the Arcadian joyousness and irresponsibility which was a somewhat popular conception of slavery.
Before Julius launches into his tale, John waxes philosophic about how the old former slave does not conform to the popular version of such people as described in “plantation fiction” stories which had done much to shape the North’s view of life during slavery. Julius is the black author’s counter to such characters created by white authors like Uncle Remus. The idea that a former slave would for some reason no look back upon that live with regret becomes central to the theme that is developed with impressive complexity by Chesnutt through the tale that Julius constructs.
“Dave use' ter b'long ter my ole marster, he wuz raise' on dis yer plantation, en I kin 'member all erbout 'im, fer I wuz ole 'nuff ter chop cotton w'en it all happen.”
“Dave’s Neckliss” is an example of what was known as dialect stories and from the manner in which Julius commences his story which takes the narrative out of the present of the framing device and into the past of the narrative proper, it is easy to see how the genre got its name. If you have trouble following this quote, then you may have difficulty with the story as the next 4500 words also replicate this dialect.
"Dave wa'n't no fool, ef he wuz a nigger”
Readers should also be forewarned that Chesnutt uses the word “nigger” almost 50 times over the course of the story. It is important to note to that the only character who uses that word is Uncle Julius, the former slave, during his recollection of the story of Dave and his “necklace.” The word is not used here for the typical offensive purposes, but rather reflects accurately the way it was commonly and routinely used within the slave culture by both blacks and whites, by both slave-owners and slaves. Nevertheless, anyone particularly offended by the word may still find it difficult to read the story if only because of the sheer volume of its presence.
“But de ham had be'n on his neck so long dat Dave had sorter got use' ter it. He look des lack he'd los' sump'n fer a day er so atter de ham wuz tuk off, en didn' 'pear ter know w'at ter do wid hisse'f; en fine'ly he up'n tuk'n tied a lightered-knot ter a string, en hid it under de flo' er his cabin, en w'en nobody wuzn' lookin' he'd take it out en hang it roun' his neck, en go off in de woods en holler en sing; en he allus tied it roun' his neck w'en he went ter sleep.”
After the punishment is up and the ham is removed, Dave begins acting strangely. Almost as if he looks back on his six month ordeal with…regret. This is the point at which the story circles back to the theme touched upon when John’s ruminations about the widespread belief that slaves might have reason to look back upon their days in bondage with regret. Perhaps, surprisingly, Chesnutt proposes an agreement that perhaps some freed slaves do feel something akin to regret when looking back, but he offers a much darker psychological explanation for this than the mythical idea that slave life bore some inherently idyllic aspects.
“...hangin' fum one er de rafters, wuz Dave; dey wuz a rope roun' his neck, en I didn' haf ter look at his face mo' d'n once fer ter see he wuz dead. Den I knowed how it all happen'. Dave had kep' on gittin' wusser en wusser in his mine, 'tel he des got ter b'lievin' he wuz all done turnt ter a ham; en den he had gone en built a fier, en tied a rope roun' his neck, des lack de hams wuz tied, en had hung hisse'f up in de smoke-'ouse fer ter kyo.”
Shortly before his romantic rival finally confesses to stealing the ham and framing Dave for the crime, Dave goes to the smokehouse and hangs himself. Julius interprets this discovery as a demonstration of the fact that Dave had finally lost his mind completely, giving into insanity which caused him to try to replicate the process of curing hams in the smokehouse. If Dave was referring to himself as turning into a ham in figurative terms as an intelligent human being unfairly maligned coming to the recognition that no matter how much he might demonstrate his superiority even to his white master (whom he quite easily intellectually manipulates earlier) he would forever be nothing more than a piece of meat to be consumed and discarded, then his suicide is not the action of an irrational mind, but just the opposite. In both interpretations, Dave goes to the smokehouse to be “cured” like a real ham, but in the figurative reading, the only cure available to Dave to escape such demeaning dehumanization is suicide.
