Word: slaving
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Foretaste of Freedom. The idea of hope comes from a kindly farmer, Samuel Turner, whose surname Nat assumes. When the young slave steals a book, his master sees proof that Nat is no less a man than himself. An educational experiment begins, during which the pupil absorbs the rudiments of scholarship along with a bitter truth: "The preacher was right. He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow...
Samuel Turner has plans to free his pet slave. The prospect appalls Nat: servitude and this loving master are all that he has known. Yet the foretaste of freedom, as Styron insists throughout the book, can only excite growing hunger. In one morning, in one glimpse of the possibilities of the future, Samuel Turner converts Nat forever into a hu man being burning to be free...
Natural Arena. Styron calls The Confessions of Nat Turner not a historical novel but a "meditation on histo ry." There are echoes in it of Melville's Benito Cereno, a tale of a Negro slave rebellion at sea. Like Melville, Styron is fascinated by the evil of slavery and its inevitable connection with violence and corruption. The novels of the Puritanical giants of the 19th century were propelled by the driving force of implacable fate; so is Nat Turner. But here Styron makes his own departure. In Melville, Hawthorne and Twain, there is always at least a memory...
...come to know the Negro, however condescending or belated the effort may appear to be. It is partially for this reason that he has made the subject of Negro slavery his obsession for the last 20 years. His fascination grew when he researched the meager documents of the only slave revolt in American history, which occurred about 20 miles from his Virginia home...
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...