Word: nat
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...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...
...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...
...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...