William Styron's novel The Confessions of Nat Tur

William Styron's novel The Confessions of Nat Turner is a work of historical fiction that centers on a hero with a goal. Although Turner's goal is described mainly through flashback, the novel progresses through the development of that goal and its tragic climax. The Confessions of Nat Turner, therefore, satisfies the traditional elements of fiction.

In a work of fiction, the author must persuade the reader to identify with the main character. In other words, the reader must see the hero's journey as his or her own journey. For this identification to take place, the hero must be in jeopardy, worthy of sympathy or possess a high degree of expertise in some area. Nat Turner exhibits all three. As the story opens, Nat is in jail, awaiting trial and certain execution; his life is in jeopardy.

That Styron is able to immediately generate feelings of sympathy for Turner is a mark of the author's skill as a fiction writer. Styron begins his novel on a historical note, with a passage from a brief pamphlet published shortly after Turner's rebellion. The pamphlet paints Turner in the most unsympathetic light: "many a mother as she presses her darling infant to her bosom, will shudder at the recollection of Nat Turner, and his band of ferocious miscreants" (xv). According to the pamphlet, Turner and his band are a confused, beastly group who murdered innocent whites, yet when armed whites tracked them down, the group proved themselves cowards and either ran or surrendere

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g the reader to identify with Turner. The story further satisfies the elements of fiction by tying its events into a particular setting. The Confessions of Nat Turner could not have occurred at any place in the world. Neither could the story have occurred at any other time in history. Turner's slave revolt could only have taken place in an environment in which slavery was firmly rooted. As Styron demonstrates, few people in Virginia questioned the practice of slavery. In the private and public debates that did occur, the average white person was able to rationalize slavery as being in the best interests of blacks: "benevolently treated, recipients of the most tender and solicitous care . . . they [blacks] had enjoyed a contentment and tranquility unequaled anywhere among the members of their race" (83). Part of Styron's mission is to reveal that blacks did not receive good treatment as slaves, even when they had so-called "kind" masters. Turner describes his boyhood, growing up as a house slave. Miss Nell and Miss Louisa, two kind white mistresses, teach him how to read: "I became in short a pet, the darling, the little black jewel of Turner's Mill. Pampered, fondled, nudged, pinched, I was the household's spoiled

Category: Literature - W