The Framing Device
The story opens with a framing device in which Chesnutt’s popular narrator character Uncle Julius tells a story about slavery days to John and Annie, a white couple from the North who have bought a former plantation in order. It is a Sunday afternoon and Uncle Julius has been invited to stay for a dinner which features a succulent ham. From outside on his hammock, John looks through the window to Uncle Julius relishing every bite of the five slices of ham he consumes. When he takes a sixth slice, however, he hesitates and John sees that he almost starts crying but is able to contain the tears. After he finally finishes, Julius joins John on the porch and John jokingly inquires if it was the mustard which had almost started him crying. Julius admits he was remembering an old friend named Dave.
Dave’s Story
Dave was a slave that belonged to Julius’ former master. He had been raised his whole life on the plantation, grew tall and strong and even learned to read the Bible. This secret is discovered and reported to the master. Dave convinces the master not to punish him for this transgression since what he was reading was the Bible and the Bible had taught him lessons like not to steal. The master agrees and suggests that Dave could begin preaching from the Bible to the illiterate slaves.
Later, a new slave girl named Dilsey arrives at the plantation and for the first time Dave falls for a woman. She returns his affections, but a rival who also used to belong to the plantation from which Dilsey came wants her for himself. This man Wiley is so fit to be tied by the thought of Dilsey marrying Dave that he frames Dave by stealing a ham and hiding in the cabin where Dave lives.
When the theft is discovered, Dave is sentenced first to forty lashes, but then force to endure a punishment of humiliation: wearing the actual stolen ham affixed to a chain around his neck like a necklace of guilt. Adding even greater insult to injury, Dave must face a more severe punishment as one by one all the other slaves come to accept that he must actually be the guilty party. When at last even Dilsey comes to admit this belief, Dave begins to break down psychologically. The only slave left on the entire plantation who believes in Dave’s story of being framed for a crime he did not commit is a very young Julius and it is because of this that Dave shares with Julius following the removal of the ham necklace his increasingly delusional belief that he is actually turning into a ham himself.
Sometime after Dave’s punishment has been lifted, Wiley is exposed as a chicken thief and suffers a wound from a shotgun. Convinced he is about to meet his maker Wiley is moved to confessed the full story about being the real ham thief and admits that he did frame the innocent Dave for the dastardly deed. All the other slaves have been called together so that they can learn of Dave’s innocence, but when Julius goes to find him, he discovers Dave’s dead body hanging in the smokehouse. His suicide there was part of his delusional attempt to be “cured” like a smoked ham.
The Framing Device
Back in the present, John heads to kitchen to cut a slice of ham for breakfast only to discover there is no ham at all. Annie admits that after hearing Julius tell his story the day before she could no longer bear the thought of eating it and gave it to Julius to take home with him.
