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christinemark's review against another edition
3.0
I read this for my African- American lit class. I really liked the story and how clever it was. It got so much across even though it is a very short short story.
The story is set in North Carolina and is in most part written in the southern vernacular, so it was in some part quite hard to understand.
Even though the author identifies as African-American, the story seems to be written through point of view of a white person
The story gives us an insight into the life of farmers in the south during the 1890’s. It is a story within a story.
An old black man tells a scary story to a white man who wants to buy the vineyard he’s currently living at and apparently living off the grapes growing in the said vineyard. He makes up/tells the white man and his wife a story to scare them off and keep them from buying the property, so that he can keep comfortably living there as he was before.
The story itself is based on the fact that the vineyard is cursed, because the previous owner wanted to keep the blacks from eating the grapes so he could get a bigger profit and therefore he paid a “witch” from the village to put a curse on the grapevine. The people working there believed it and since they were few cases of the supposed curse actually working, kept off the grapes as the owner wanted.
When a new guy comes to work at the vineyard, without knowing about the curse he eats the grapes and is taken to the witch the next day and she gives him a remedy (which he says tastes a lot like whiskey) and says that it may or may not work.
Somehow the guy becomes connected to the grapevine and his health changes according to the seasons and according to what’s happening to the grapevines, which means that he becomes really strong during the summer months, which his owner/ employer sees as an opportunity to make more money, which inevitably turns against him when a “yankee” comes over and offers a remedy to make his grapevine produce even more grapes so that he can make even more wine and therefore more money. This turns out to be a scam, but unfortunately it is too late to do anything about it and the owner loses not only the vineyard, or what was left of it, but also his precious worker, because as he is “connected” to the grapevines, just like the grapevines he dies.
The story shows the greediness of the vineyard owner – he is willing to sell and buy Henry as he pleases for the gain of it and doesn’t care what will happen to him, or the loss of the other land owners, when Henry falls sick during the autumn/winter months and can’t work anymore, just like he treats him badly when he is full of strength in the spring/summer months and makes pranks and jokes and he threatens to whip him for it -> dehumanizing of Henry
The story also shows how strongly the uneducated people believed what they were told and how strongly they believed in the “supernatural” that Henry, made himself believe that he is connected to the grapevine and therefore when he saw it dying, he made himself believe he would die too. -> the power of suggestion
On the other hand, it also shows the cleverness of Uncle Julius and the scheming he does in order to get what he wants
The story is set in North Carolina and is in most part written in the southern vernacular, so it was in some part quite hard to understand.
Even though the author identifies as African-American, the story seems to be written through point of view of a white person
The story gives us an insight into the life of farmers in the south during the 1890’s. It is a story within a story.
An old black man tells a scary story to a white man who wants to buy the vineyard he’s currently living at and apparently living off the grapes growing in the said vineyard. He makes up/tells the white man and his wife a story to scare them off and keep them from buying the property, so that he can keep comfortably living there as he was before.
The story itself is based on the fact that the vineyard is cursed, because the previous owner wanted to keep the blacks from eating the grapes so he could get a bigger profit and therefore he paid a “witch” from the village to put a curse on the grapevine. The people working there believed it and since they were few cases of the supposed curse actually working, kept off the grapes as the owner wanted.
When a new guy comes to work at the vineyard, without knowing about the curse he eats the grapes and is taken to the witch the next day and she gives him a remedy (which he says tastes a lot like whiskey) and says that it may or may not work.
Somehow the guy becomes connected to the grapevine and his health changes according to the seasons and according to what’s happening to the grapevines, which means that he becomes really strong during the summer months, which his owner/ employer sees as an opportunity to make more money, which inevitably turns against him when a “yankee” comes over and offers a remedy to make his grapevine produce even more grapes so that he can make even more wine and therefore more money. This turns out to be a scam, but unfortunately it is too late to do anything about it and the owner loses not only the vineyard, or what was left of it, but also his precious worker, because as he is “connected” to the grapevines, just like the grapevines he dies.
The story shows the greediness of the vineyard owner – he is willing to sell and buy Henry as he pleases for the gain of it and doesn’t care what will happen to him, or the loss of the other land owners, when Henry falls sick during the autumn/winter months and can’t work anymore, just like he treats him badly when he is full of strength in the spring/summer months and makes pranks and jokes and he threatens to whip him for it -> dehumanizing of Henry
The story also shows how strongly the uneducated people believed what they were told and how strongly they believed in the “supernatural” that Henry, made himself believe that he is connected to the grapevine and therefore when he saw it dying, he made himself believe he would die too. -> the power of suggestion
On the other hand, it also shows the cleverness of Uncle Julius and the scheming he does in order to get what he wants
jade's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
This was Charles W. Chesnutt's first short story and is the first work by an African American to be published in high prestige literary magazine (The Atlantic).
Indeed, when I first saw the town, there brooded over it a calm that seemed almost sabbatic in it's restfulness, though I learned later on that underneath it's somnolent exterior the deeper currents of life - love and hatred, joy and despair, ambition and avarice, faither and friendship - flowed not less steadily than in livelier latitudes.
A Northerner inspects a property in the South, and while doing so, comes across Uncle Julius, a Black man, eating grape on a log. Uncle Julius tells a cautionary tale about the cursed grapevines, while eating the grapes from those very vines himself.
"Well, I dunno whe'r you believes in cunj'in'er not - some er de w'ite folks don't, er say dey don't - but de truf er de matter is dat dis yer ole vimya'd is goophered."
This is a short story so I don't want to give to much away except to say that when Uncle Julius is recounting his story, it does read in what Nisi Shawl refers to as the 'eye-dialect', with the words written as to how they would have been pronounced. I got used to it, but I did find I needed to read some words or a sentence or two out loud before I was able to understand the context in some parts, which may not be what a lot of more modern readers are used to, especially if they are after a quick short story read, but I would argue that a short story read is exactly the place to practice reading this style.
I enjoyed the tale though like with most short stories, I have questions on it's purpose. Was it, as the story surmises, Uncle Julius' way of scaring off the new owners? Was it describing the poisonous nature of slavery? Was it referring to a deeper meaning to the connection with the land (turning as bad/horrid as the humans on it - eg the slave master?)
I appreciated the old owner 'getting' what he was owed for being greedy. I also noted that that the Northerner is quite respectful to both Uncle Julius and a small Black girl that they pass on the way to the grapevines. A contrast perhaps to the behaviour of the old owner?
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs and Slavery
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