"His way of looking at the past seemed very strange to us; his view of certain sides of life was essentially different from ours. He never indulged in any regrets for the Arcadian joyousness and irresponsibility which was a somewhat popular conception of slavery; his had not been the lot of the petted house-servant, but that of the toiling field-hand." (22).
The narrator notes that Uncle Julius only tells stories of the hardships of different slaves and that he doesn't pretend that slavery was anything other than difficult. He is against slavery and feels bad that it was something Julius went through. It seems as though the narrator believes that slavery was a terrible lifestyle and his sympathy for Julius allows him to note that he doesn't look back on it the way Julius does, because he didn't suffer the same way.
It surprises me that he is so kind in his interpretation when he can also pick up on the way that Julius uses his stories of the past to get his own way. His stories often feature past slaves that are now no where near the vineyard, or dead, so they can't be questioned at all or verified with others. Then at the end of every chapter, the narrator draws the conclusion of how Julius uses the story to trick Miss Annie into letting him have what he wants, whether it is a ham, or use of the schoolhouse. Yet the narrator doesn't intervene and still feels sympathy towards Julius and his old life as a slave.
A side note of something I've noticed in every chapter is the way that the wife is always the fool that falls for Julius's silly superstitions. While the husband points out how the story correlates to what Julius wanted, the wife is always the one that can't help but believe Julius and unknowingly lets him have his way. Over and over again, the woman character is the fool while the man sees through it all.
I too noticed that the wife is made the butt of the joke while the husband and Uncle Julius come across as smart - Julius because he can weave the tales to suit his need and the husband because he can see through Julius's cunning. The poor wife functions only to further the characterization of the two men, especially as the stories continue and reader's learn nothing new about her.
ReplyDeleteYes, she is affected by the story, but that also suggests that Julius's meaning or intention is not just about pulling one over on his white audience; he also does tell stories about slavery that movingly tell about some of its horrors and hardships.
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