Word: nat
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...Styron himself projects the reserved, slightly courtly manner of the storybook Virginian. It is a coincidence that his book should come on the heels of the summer riots. While Styron does not condone the violence, he views it through a chilling perspective sharpened by his five years with Nat Turner. The Negro extremist, says Styron, "is purifying himself by violence of a sense of his own abject self-ratedness...
...undoubted success of Nat Turner, Styron feels that he has discharged an obligation. "Melville said that for a mighty book you must have a mighty theme. I hesitate to quote that because it sounds pretentious, but my theme was god-sent...
This one revolt, led by Nat Turner in 1831, was at that time considered an aberration; it inconveniently disturbed an accepted notion of the slave system: that slavery, although morally wrong, was used with such charity, benevolence, and restraint that an organized, bloodthirsty insurrection was inthinkable. Nat Turner proved otherwise. The psychological and physical oppression of slavery was supposed to make organized revolt impossible, and the system was doubtlessly emasculating upon most slaves. Nat's revolt stood as a momentous threat to the slave society's security...
Styron uses the story of Nat Turner to describe what it was like for a man to live as a slave from day to day. He must relate the story through the eyes of the rebellious slave, thereby intruding on the consciousness of a black man. But the book does not purport to provide a deep analysis of the slave mind, nor does it intend to present a metaphor for Negro rioters in 1967. Styron is simply creating a work of art which portrays the psychological effects of slavery...
...would be almost pointless to draw parallels between Nat Turner's rebels and the black revolutionists of 1967 because, in Styron's words, the slaves existed in "hopelessly oppressed conditions" whereas blacks now have some political power and consciousness...