Then Cobb said: "Boy's where's the press?"
"Yondah, massah," Hark said. He pointed to the shed several yards away, directly at the side of the shop, where the cider barrels lay in a moist and dusty rank in the shadows past the open door. "Red bar'l, massah. Dat's de bar'l fo' a gentleman, massah." When the desire to play the obsequious coon came over him, Hark's voice became so plump and sweet that it was downright unctuous. "Marse Joe, he save dat bar'l for de fines' gentlemens."
"Bother the cider," Cobb said, "where's the brandy?"
"Brandy is de bottles on de shelf," said Hark. He began to scramble to his feet. "I fix de brandy fo' you, massah." But again Cobb motioned him back with a brisk wave of his hand.... Something about the man offended me, filled me with the sharpest displeasure, and it wasn't until he limped unsteadily past us through the crackling brown patch of weeds toward the cider press, saying not another word, that I realized it wasn't the man himself who annoyed me so much as it was Hark's manner in his presence--the unspeakable bootlicking Sambo, all giggles and smirks and oily, sniveling servility.
It was this same Hark who, according to Nat, "gave expression to that certain inward sense that every Negro possesses when, dating from the age of twelve or ten or earlier, he becomes aware that heis only merchandise, goods, in the eyes of all white people devoid of character or moral sense or soul." Hark called this feeling "black-assed," and it summed up the numbness and dread in every Negro.
As Hark put it,
"Don't matter who dey is, Nat, good or bad, even ol' Marse Joe, dey white folks day gwine make you feel black-assed. Never seed a white man smile at me befo'. How come dat 'plies, Nat? Figger a white man treat you right you gwine feel white-assed. Naw suh! Young Massah, old massah sweet-talk me, I jes' feel black-assed th'ough and th'ough. Figger when I gets to heaven like you say I is, do good Lord hisself even He gwine make old Hark feel black-assed, standin' befo' de golden throne. Dere He is, white as snow, givin' me a lot of sweet talk and me feelin' like a black-assed angel.
It is this black-assed feeling, experienced intensely by Nat in the presence of the white people who were most kind to him, that stirred the deepest emotions of rage and confusion in him. Three white people in his life--his one-time master Samuel Turner, Judge Cobb, and Margaret Whitehead -- provoked a moment of warm and mutual sympathy in him. They caused him to feel a dim glimmer of hope, and this short-lived thrill left him more perplexed and enraged than before.
Other people, including his last master, treated Nat decently; but with them it was always the same kind of benevolent paternalism which a person holds towards a valued pet, or a handy ox. The most infuriating thing Nat could imagine was to be submitted to the "wanton and arrogant kindness" of a white man. This ambivalence of race accounted more for Nat's rebellion than did any rage resulting from being intolerably oppressed; it is a theme which Styron has Nat express over and over.
Does it seem a hopeless paradox that the less toilsome became the circumstances of my life the more I ached to escape it? That the more tolerable and human white people became in their dealings with me the keener was my passion to destroy them?
Nat's revolt occurred in Virginia, not in the brutal Deep South. He himself rarely encountered harshness and was the product of an ideal master--he was educated, promised freedom, more or less, and refined in the white man's house.
Styron's development of the relationship between Samuel Turner and Nat, if not among the most imaginative parts of the book, is certainly among the most sensitive and interesting. The slave boy viewed his master in awe, as almost divine. The master, in turn, when he saw a young spark of interest, gave Nat the encouragement and opportunity to learn to read.
Samuel Turner looked upon Nat as an experiment to destroy the myth of the Negro's inferior intellect. He exhorted Nat and gradually gave him responsibilities. Styron bases Samuel Turner on John Hartwell Cocke, who was a leading spokesman for emancipation in the Virginia legislautre of the early 1880's. (Ironically, Samuel Turner's efforts to educate and "housebreak" Nat ultimately resulted in the revolt that doomed the growing movement for slave emancipation in Virginia.) Styron takes the philosophy of Cocke and puts it directly into Samuel Turner's mouth. Turner's discussion with two ministers are, word-for-word, from Cocke's personal letters:
I have long and do still steadfastly believe that slavery is the great cause of all the chief evils of our land. It is a cancer eating at our bowels, the source of all our misery, individual, political, and economic.
Nat, whose real father ran away when he was an infant, identified with his master and set himself apart from the Sambos--the field Negroes. He felt disgust at having to use their outhouse. But, as one slave infomred him, "Yo' ass black jes' like mine, honey chile." In this way Styron shows how Nat's relationship with Samuel Turner was tormented and complicated; the condition became radically worse when Nat was denied his promised freedom by a Baptist preacher in whose hands Samuel Turner had entrusted him.
Almost to have freedom and then to have it grabbed away would be more than any mortal could stand. Given his early piety which his Bible-reading had sharpened, Nat's leap to religious fanaticism was not a long one. Each new debasing experience led him more and more to the avenging words of the Old Testament:
"Son of Man, prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord; Say, a sword, a sword is sharpened, and also furbished: it is sharpened to make a sore slaughter ... Slay utterly old and young, both maids and little children, and women..."
It became Nat's obsession and divine mission to kill all the white people in Southampton, Virginia. Styron, with historical justification, isolates Nat from his murderous followers and portrays the man's pure hate; it is calm, intelligent, and unrepentant. Others, says Styron, "hate but with a hatred which is all sullenness and impotent resentment, like the helpless, resigned fury one feels toward indifferent Nature throughout long days of relentless heat or after periods of unceasing rain." Nat, however, had known the white man and had been cultivated by him.
The sharp contrast which Styron draws between Nat and his friend Hark contrasts the puritanical nature of one with the worldly humor of the other. In Styron's view, Nat was largely motivated by sexual frustration, while Hark had no such similar hang-ups. It was Hark, too, who could murder ruthlessly. Nat maintanied a strange distance from the rebels' blood-spilling.
With the framework of an insurrection and trial, it would have been easy for Styron to produce an intense novel that maintained a delirious pitch throughout. What he has done, however, is to create imaginative visions and recollectons within the mind of the doomed slave and yet present the poignancy of the recent massacres and the impending execution. Styron is a great stylist and a perfectionist, but he certainly is not guilty of trying to present a cosmic view of the South or the declining prosperity of Virginia Tidewater. Criticisms of Styron's use of Nat's memory to describe landscapes are unfounded. The author's sensitivity towards the setting adds much richness to the novel. In the end, the reader is only exhausted by the many and deep experiences in Nat Turner's mind. Styron has achieved his goal--a work of art and a significant contribution to black-white understanding