His nightmare is being conjured into a slave himself, thus learning an important lesson in the value of treating others more humanely so that when the nightmare ends he makes good on his vow to become a more benevolent master. (Mars is the dialect pronunciation of “master” by Julius). Julius is inspired to tell the tale of a particularly harsh and vicious news master-Mars Jeems. John opens his narrative by reluctantly but firmly telling Uncle Julius that he can no longer allow the old man’s grandson to continue working on the plantation because he is unreliable. The story ends with Julius asking for permission to use the schoolroom as a meeting place for the temperance group from his church, explaining that ghosts don’t haunt church meetings. Thus, if John uses the lumber from the schoolroom, he is sure to have a haunted kitchen. The kitchen became so subject to tales of being haunted that eventually it was turned into a schoolroom. In the end, his plans went terribly awry as the tree was cut down to make lumber to build a kitchen. Julius warns against using that lumber by telling a story about a slave who so wanted to ensure he was never separated from his wife that was conjured into a tree. The result wasĪgain, the story starts out in the contemporary setting with John’s wife wanting a kitchen and John deciding he will use old lumber from a schoolhouse on the property. The story itself tells of the master getting a conjure woman to poison the vines to keep the slaves from eating them and how a newly arrived slave unwittingly ate the grapes. For instance, he tells the story this story with the intention of staying on the plantation as a hired hand tending to the grapevine he’s been working on all during the period of Reconstruction. Many of the stories, like “The Goophered Grapevine” also conclude with some kind of surprise revelation about the likely intent of Julius telling the story. The story turns on the introduction of a supernatural element at the resolution of which the narrative turns back to standard English with John again the de facto narrator relating how he and his wife Annie each respond (in increasingly different ways) to the strange story. The narrator, John, introduces Julius as a storyteller and proceeds to relate the story the old man tells complete in slave dialect. The collection starts off with what is probably the second most cohesive display of the Chesnutt’s brilliantly subtle method of telling a story-within-a-story-within-a-story-within-a-story to force readers to understand theme, character, literary method, irony and historical revision, bested only by his masterpiece (and one of the finest short stories in the history of American literature), “Dave’s Neckliss.” “The Goophered Grapevine” sets the template for the stories to follow as it is introduced by a white narrator who has bought the plantation where old Uncle Julius used to be a slave. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own. These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community.
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