Free Downloads The Confessions Of Nat Turner
In the late summer of 1831, in a remote section of southeastern Virginia, there took place the only effective, sustained revolt in the annals of American Negro slavery...The revolt was led by a remarkable Negro preacher named Nat Turner, an educated slave who felt himself divinely ordained to annihilate all the white people in the region.The Confessions of Nat Turner is narrated by Nat himself as he lingers in jail through the cold autumnal days before his execution. The compelling story ranges over the whole of Nat's Life, reaching its inevitable and shattering climax that bloody day in August. The Confessions of Nat Turner is not only a masterpiece of storytelling; is also reveals in unforgettable human terms the agonizing essence of Negro slavery. Through the mind of a slave, Willie Styron has re-created a catastrophic event, and dramatized the intermingled miseries, frustrations--and hopes--which caused this extraordinary black man to rise up out of the early mists of our history and strike down those who held his people in bondage.
Paperback: 480 pages
Publisher: Vintage; 25 Reissue edition (November 10, 1992)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0679736638
ISBN-13: 978-0679736639
Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (147 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #23,187 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #144 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Historical > Biographical #855 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics #1036 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary
If William Styron has done us a disservice it's that he's unleashed upon America the concept of political correctness. The backlash against this book, to a large extent, is what started it all. Some of the criticism is on-target, but much is unfair.Slaves typically have been depicted in one of two ways: as the simple-minded shuffling watermelon-eating darkie, or as the noble African struggling valiantly against the tyrannical white plantation.One depiction is overtly racist, and the secondly is unrealistically romantic (and in it's own way demeaning).What Styron gives us is "none of the above". What he tries to depict is a reality that is often overlooked or not acknowledged: that chattel slavery in the American South was a ruthlessly and crushingly effective system; so effective that throughout its history (from the 1600's through the Emancipation Proclamation) there were only two armed rebellions.Slavery was obviously a great evil; it is equally obvious that as a mechanism for suppressing the enslaved it was remarkably effective. It follows that this mechanism will have an effect on the suppressed. Chattel slavery was, in many cases, a "breaker of spirits".The depiction of the slaves in this book is not always positive. What Styron tries to show (sometimes successfully) is that slavery was a heavy weight, and that the slaves who bore this weight were not always noble. This is what many readers have found offensive, and why the book has been labeled "racist". This was not my impression (my background: I'm an African American raised in Texas.)This is a novel full of ugliness and negative characters. There is not a single fully sympathetic character in the entire book, black or white.
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