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A review by christinemark
The Goophered Grapevine by Charles W. Chesnutt
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