Assignment 9: Charle's Chesnutt's "Goopherd Grapevine"

As we discussed today in class, sometimes pieces of fiction tend to intice the reader more than an autobiography or biography on someone's life. I think having the story start out with the present and "real life" was an interesting way to capture the audience's attention but the fact that the story switched from the present to the past intrigued me. At the beginning we find out that someone (the narrator) is looking to purchase an old vineyard. This already begins to make the reader's mind wonder about what happened to the vineyard and why the last owner was no longer living on the plantation. Then as the mysterious character of Julius appears, and tells the new comers to not move onto the plantation, we see the gothic element begin to become more prominent. At this point I really wanted to know what had happened and really wanted to know the story that Julius had to tell so I was glad when he proceeded into the story of the vineyard. I feel like the set up of the short story was done in this particular manner in order to grasp and hold the reader's attention to the very end when we find out that Julius was somewhat unreliable due to the fact that he was prospering living off the property without an owner. Adding Julius and his story to the novel brought in the gothic aspect and made a form of suspense. Blacks were very much played as a commodity throughout this novella. We see through Julius's story that the blacks on the plantation and surrounding plantations are not allowed to eat the grapes. This portrays them as unequal and shows that they are merely on their plantations to work and not expect much else from their owners. We also see Julius describe Mars' Dugal' McAdoo's behavior toward Henry as flakey. Mars' Dugal only wants Henry when he is able to provide him with hard labor and money. Whenever Henry does well in the spring he keeps him around, but then quickly disposes him to another family in the fall when he knows Henry will become useless and sick because he does not care to deal with Henry when he is in this state. Even at the end of the story, we see the narrator describe Julius as a commodity when he defines him as unreliable and ends the story discussing how he should be more than satisfied even though he moved onto the plantation because he pays him well. He takes no consideration for Julius's feelings.