THE DIALECTICS OF SUPPRESSION: WILLIAM STYRON’S THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER
Keywords:
Antebellum South, Whites, Negroes, Slavery, Third World War, WastelandAbstract
The paper seeks to explore how William Styron’s fourth novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner, affirms his faith in the suppressed hero. It endeavours to explore in this novel the dialectics through which the Negroes were suppressed and their miserable conditions in which they were subjected to live in antebellum South. It is a sort of a deep study of the domination of the whites over the blacks. Styron through this novel very successfully examines Nat Turner’s 1831 Southampton County Virginia slave revolt. The paper explores how Southerners favoured the enslavement of Africans mainly for three main viewpoints. Firstly, the rationalist believed that Negroes were inferior to whites and, therefore, could be treated as slaves. The Whites believed that slavery had to be accepted for the economic welfare of the Southern states of America. Secondly, the proslavery pseudo-scientists tried to highlight biological and cultural differences between the races i.e. blacks and whites that would make the enslavement of black people justified. Thirdly, the proslavery evangelic clergymen supported slavery on the theological grounds citing the Scriptures. In Styron's this novel, these three proslavery arguments which form the strong pillars of dialectics of human bondage and suffering are expressed by numerous white characters. The paper deals with the instances of racial discrimination, demonic suppression and exploitation of Negroes by the whites, and the whites’ dialectics through which the Negroes themselves accepted to be enslaved and exploited.
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References
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