Esacerbated, torn to pieces by hatred, mortally exasperated by slavery, they would have sold their souls to any evil spirit, to any forest phantom, just to be forever separated from the white man's world. They had nothing left to lose.

This powerful description paints a vivid picture of the intense emotions and desperation that these individuals were experiencing. The use of words like "esacerbated," "torn to pieces," and "mortally exasperated" emphasizes the extremity of their situation. The idea of selling their souls to escape the white man's world shows the depth of their longing for freedom and separation.

The rating of 4 and a half stars indicates that this piece of writing has had a significant impact on the reader. It has managed to convey the complex emotions and experiences of these individuals in a powerful and engaging way. Overall, it is a thought-provoking and moving piece of literature.

Terrible book. It is just as dishonest as Margaret Mitchell's GONE WITH THE WIND, yet it fails to be even remotely as entertaining.

William Styron's issue lies in his overwhelming self-disgust and his desperate attempt to vindicate the guilty south. This book is not truly about "discovering" a new truth regarding "the Negro." Instead, it is about his frantic effort to preserve his own illusions.

Here is what William Stryon desires to believe: Slavery, although a dreadful curse on both races, cannot be attributed to the South. Particularly not to Virginia, and most especially not to Virginia's ruling elite, who were all well-intentioned and decent individuals of the highest social standing. The genuine tragedy is not that blacks endured suffering under slavery, but that the wise, tolerant, and truly enlightened Virginia elite were never permitted to end slavery in their own manner. Blacks were overly impatient for freedom and behaved irresponsibly, incited by the fanatical agitators of the North.

Are you convinced? I am not. However, William Stryon truly wishes to believe this drivel.

So, what he does is present us with a Nat Turner he can tolerate. This so-called "rebel" is not only a weakling, a physical coward, and a fool but also an almost comically enthusiastic advocate for Old Virginia. He boasts that his first master hosts extravagant parties for guests "with names like Byrd and Cartwright." Oh, great! All the upper-class Virginians are well-meaning, sensitive, and educated. It is only the poor whites and meddling Yankees who cause all the problems!

Nat Turner is a terrible liar. He blames all the wrong people for slavery. And he continuously asserts that "God is absent." What he truly means is that he wants God to shoulder the blame for slavery. Now, something tells me that it is Styron who is seeking someone to hold accountable for slavery. The real Nat Turner knew precisely who to blame and acted accordingly.

This is a truly awful book. Nevertheless, it is so saturated with despair and pessimism that, in a sense, one gets the impression that writing it was its own form of punishment. Styron was a deeply troubled man, and he artistically collapsed after penning this book. Almost as if he was aware that it was all lies and knew that he would be judged for what he had done. Just like all the other slaveowners.

Styron is extremely careful to note in his direct and straightforward introduction that the majority of what he writes is纯粹的推测 on his part - not a conclusive history.

Albeit it is based upon the real confessions of Nat Turner and related research/experience. Given this, many of the complaints about this work seem rather misdirected.

On the other hand, this is a highly sensitive and crucial topic. So, as is frequently the case with race matters, I find myself in a state of uncertainty regarding where I stand.

The story itself can be difficult to get through at times... perhaps most of the time. The topic and the situations it encompasses are often painful, at best, and should make anyone within the spectrum of humanity feel uneasy or even downright nauseous.

Having said that, it is still very readable despite some tense moments.

As an aside, the 2016 movie "Birth of a Nation" is derived from the same source material. While it has only, oh... 20% overlap with this book, it does provide some context and a different perspective on all of this. It is probably worth checking out if you're a "fan", but of course, your experience may vary.

You see the quotation marks down there? And I really am not going to dance around spoilers.

I’ve not read Nat Turner. I’ve not read Sophie’s Choice. In fact I’ve (likely) never read word one by Styron. And don’t really care to. Aesthetic reasons.

But there’s a brief discussion I ran across in Frederick R. Karl’s American Fictions 1940-1980: A Comprehensive History and Critical Evaluation about a collection of responses to Styron’s book :: William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond. I can’t say I’ve mastered the issues, but I do value Karl’s emphasis. That it is not so much a matter of appropriation (property) as it is a matter of articulation (aesthetics). Them’s my words. [in the following quotation, I reproduce Karl’s footnote as a footnote...]

“Because Styron was attempting something so difficult in Nat Turner, he made several strategical mistakes, which seriously affect the ideological level of the novel. The response of ten black writers to the novel is revelatory:* for while it pinpoints Styron’s errors, it also establishes several assumptions, part of a black aesthetic, which are destructive for fiction as a whole.

“One of the basic assumptions of all the writers except John A. Williams is that a white author should skirt black themes. Only one of the ten suggest that Styron’s Turner is a tragic figure almost on the scale of Othello, and that his murder of Margaret Whitehead in the fields, by piercing her side twice with his sword and then smashing her head with a post, has the power and feel of Othello’s murder of Desdemona. The errors Styron made--the worst of which is to have an unmarried Turner lust after white flesh, when his own Confessions indicate no such thing--do not affect many of the powerful segments of the novel. The buildup to the insurrection itself, the rationale for the slave revolt, and Turner’s own hesitation--these do not demean blacks, but, on the contrary, give great weight and thrust to black aspirations. Rather than justifying the ‘kind mast’ theme, Styron makes us accept that the slaves under Turner would murder even the kinder slave owners--Travis, for example--in order to assert their own humanity. One must read the book this way.

“Styron’s novel is concerned, broadly, with the tragic destiny of American history wherever it touches on black-white relationships. His assumption of Turner’s voice as his narrative devices was, I think, an attempt to bridge the gap between black and white, by ingesting the slave experience within himself and then manifesting the result in literary terms: exaggerating or distorting here, following Turner’s Confessions there, allowing himself the play of interpretation fiction permits. He would do something similar in Sophie’s Choice, ingesting there the concentration camp experience.

“Yet the crux of the matter is that that assumption of Turner’s voice, whatever Styron intended by it, was a strategical error. For the very reasoning that led Styron into attempting an ‘I’ narration in the voice of Turner should have dissuaded him: questions of language, mentality, point of view, and motivation. As soon as Styron used Turner as his ‘I’ he became involved in in questions of verisimilitude beyond the distortions a literary genre permits; he became involved in his own credibility, which is one of the very areas the black critics questioned.”

*[Karl’s own footnote] A very valuable document printed in 1968 (Beacon Press) William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond, edited by John Henrik Clarke. These black responses are significant not only for their antagonism to Styron’s presentation of Turner, but for their particular ways of viewing black-white relationships in the novel. I will take up their various points later, but I am concerned throughout with the pressure such a response puts on any writer, black or white, who tries to write about racial relationships, or generally about blacks. In the decade and more since then, whites have written only rarely about blacks, chiefly Malamud in The Tenants and Updike in Rabbit Redux, the latter a noble effort at understanding which touches upon no reality. One point the Nat Turner ‘ten’ fail to respond to is why no major black writer has tackled the Nat Turner rebellion. Baldwin, Williams Morrison, Killens, Demby, and others all passed up the opportunity, as did the most obvious choice, Richard Wright. Since the subject was also a 1960s theme not preempted by blacks, the implication that white writers should leave black subjects alone is not well taken.”

Karl goes on to say that what Styron should have done :: “Styron’s Turner is not the black Turner; and for that reason the author should not have personalized his protagonist, but should have located him in the mind or imagination of a contemporary of Turner’s, such as Gray, or even the judge, Jeremiah Cobb, an interesting but undeveloped secondary character. By such location, Styron could have presented the black Turner as well as the Turner who fitted his own literary conception. Instead, he lost distance, and his Turner loses credibility, neither the Turner of history nor the Turner of an imaginative recreation.”

An amazing story

is told in such a masterful way that the tension gradually mounts and mounts until it ultimately detonates in Turner's killing of Margaret Whitehead.

I have a suspicion that this novel had a bomb-like impact when it was first published

for a plethora of reasons. Firstly, a white man penning a story from the perspective of a black man in the 1960s was bound to be controversial. Moreover, the black man that Mr. Styron chose to embody was an individual who elicited intense emotions on both sides of the racial divide.

What struck me as most astonishing and impactful was how effortlessly the revolution (or eruption, as it is termed) occurred. The fact that no solitary event was accountable for the Negro uprising renders it all the more potent. It is evident that no major seismic event was required, yet the novel would have been less effective had it needed to fabricate such an incident. This uprising was the result of the cumulative effect of slavery, and Mr. Styron is highly proficient in evoking this.

I am intrigued to conduct further research into what effect the Nat Turner uprising ultimately had on the emancipation of blacks from slavery.

A Controversial Winner of the 1967 Pulitzer Prize

Here we are, 34 years later, and The Confessions of Nat Turner is still making headlines. Recently, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has made comments about the book. Interestingly, his views have evolved from initially negative impressions years ago to more positive ones now. The main controversy surrounding this book is rather straightforward. How could a white southerner, who is also a descendant of slave owners, pen a novel about Nat Turner, one of the few slaves who had the courage to stand up and demand his freedom by leading a rebellion? Some people have even gone so far as to assert that the author didn't have the right to write the book in the first place, arguing that it's not his history. However, we must ask ourselves, should Nat Turner be forever isolated? And should African-American history be held apart?

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I really struggled with this book. It is the second book where a white person attempts to envision the lives of slaves, following the dismal "Scarlet Sister Mary" by Julia Peterkin. It serves as a stark reminder of white privilege. It would be another 15 years before Alice Walker's "The Color Purple" and 20 years before Toni Morrison's "Beloved" would win more-deserved Pulitzers, describing the black slave experience as black slaves. Why the Pulitzer committee took so long to recognize black writers (besides Alice and Toni, the first black man wasn't awarded the Pulitzer until James McPherson's short story collection "Elbow Room" won in 1978) is difficult to explain without considering white privilege and racial bias. After all, Zora Neal Hurston was forgotten, and Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin were all overlooked.

Nat Turner's short-lived yet violent rebellion in Virginia is described in the first person through the eyes of its protagonist, with all the horrors of slavery included. I believe, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that this is only the second Pulitzer winner after Jaimie McPheeters to use the first-person narrator. I appreciate Styron's unwavering look at the institution of slavery and its inherent violence, but some have argued, with some validity, that he presents too many "nice" masters. I don't know. I just think it's a shame that we had to wait so long before the descendants of slaves, speaking of their own experiences and those of their predecessors, would be recognized. Even Haley's "Roots: The Saga of an American Family" only received a nearly inexplicable "special" prize and not an official Pulitzer for his portrayal of a well-researched ancestor.

As a book, "Nat Turner" is fairly good but not as good as some of the others I mentioned. I felt that Nat remained in some ways an inscrutable character for whom I never developed much sympathy. His sexuality (consisting of rape fantasies of white women and one masturbatory experience with another slave) was relatively superficial, and his spirituality became overbearing. However, I do understand how it's hard to criticize a white male writer for trying to set things right. I just think that a black writer would have been better suited to tell this story, and the writing simply wasn't extraordinary. Looking at other books published that year (including "When She Was Good" by Philip Roth, clearly not Roth's finest), I suppose it was a good idea to raise awareness about the real problems of racism by awarding the Pulitzer to this book when there didn't seem to be a truly outstanding book published that year in the US.

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Before reading the book:

I have a complex web of emotions when it comes to taking on this book. I am truly in awe of Styron's writing prowess. His command over the language and the technical aspects of writing is simply remarkable. However, at the same time, I am well aware of the critiques that the book has received. From my experiences in graduate school and as a critical scholar, I understand the intricacies and sensitivities involved when a white man in the 20th century attempts to write about the experiences of a black man in the 19th century. This aspect makes me extremely uncomfortable, yet there is still a part of me that is eager to read the book and form my own opinion.

After reading the book:

I still find myself with a jumble of emotions regarding this book! Of course, the writing style is not the issue here. Styron is indeed a master when it comes to all the technicalities of writing. The problem lies in the way the story is developed and presented. I simply cannot get past the fact that it was a white man in 1967 writing about a black man in 1831. I delved into some background material, including Styron's own thoughts on this matter, but it still doesn't sit right with me. On one hand, it felt as if Styron was somehow justifying the killings, until the moment when Nat begins to realize that perhaps God doesn't want him to take lives. Additionally, there is an underlying current of sexuality throughout the book that seems to suggest that if Nat had been having regular sexual relations, everything would have been okay. (I did find his realization that after his insurrection was over, he should probably get a wife rather amusing.) It appears that Styron was hinting at a psychosexual motivation for what occurred, and I'm not convinced that it can be reduced to such a simplistic explanation. I know that this book will continue to萦绕 in my thoughts for a long time to come, as I struggle to come to terms with the racial conceit. However, one could also make a similar argument about Styron's "Sophie's Choice," suggesting that by telling the story of a woman who survived the concentration camps, he is speaking for someone who may not necessarily need him to do so. And therein lies the crux of the problem when dealing with the issue of who gets to speak for whom.

I had never heard of Nat Turner before reading this novel.

It is true that this novel has been boycotted by some African Americans who are unhappy with a white man writing in the first person and presuming to assume the thoughts of an enslaved black man. However, my feeling is that this is an incredibly powerful work of fiction.

It presents a compelling narrative that forces us to confront the harsh reality of slavery. We all have a responsibility to understand and try to come to terms with slavery and its lasting impact on our 21st century world, especially in the form of deeply ingrained racism.

This book, in my opinion, does an excellent job of shining a light on some of the very dark and often overlooked areas of our past. It is a brilliant piece of literature that should not be dismissed simply because of the author's race.

We need to look beyond the controversy and engage with the ideas and themes presented in the novel to gain a better understanding of our history and the ongoing struggle for equality.

This book aims to be a fictionalized reconstruction of the slave revolt led by Nat Turner, which took place in 1831 in Virginia. Thanks to this novel, William Styron won the Pulitzer Prize in 1968. By taking up the confessions that Nat made in prison to the lawyer assigned to interrogate him, Styron reconstructed the events, starting the story from the end and proceeding backwards.

In short, we know right from the start that things went wrong: Nat is in prison, awaiting the execution of the death penalty, many other blacks who helped him have already been killed, the revolt was quelled in a short time and the blacks are still slaves.

I was rather curious about the idea of reading this book given the subject, although I must admit that when I realized that the author was a white man, my first thought was: "oh oh, I foresee trouble". The question that - at least for me - arises spontaneously is: "is it right that a white man not only starts writing a book about the slavery of blacks, but does it by narrating in the first person and thus putting himself in the shoes of a black slave?".

Now, I don't have a right answer, I don't even know if there is a right answer and a wrong answer. I think one can try, I think some may succeed and others not. It must be said that as soon as the book came out it was very successful, even among blacks, and then, all of a sudden, that was it, the book was no longer good, William Styron was no longer good, the book was no longer read by blacks, but despite this they started and then continued to denounce it as a racist book. Well, this is not correct. Read the book and then you can say it's racist. But you have to read it first. It's not that everything that whites write about slavery is not good. If we then add that the book, as soon as it came out, was approved and loved by the black community, if we add that even (famous) black writers - such as James Baldwin - praised the book, well, perhaps accusing it of racism a priori is not the best solution.

If the same book had been written by a black person, would it have been okay, would it have been loved and appreciated and read by everyone? Baldwin claims yes.

What do I think of the book? That it's not simple. It's not a book that keeps the reader glued to the pages. It may be the stream of consciousness, it may be that it's very slow in some points, but I admit that sometimes I found it heavy.

Probably it's also the "fault" of the protagonist himself with whom one does not particularly get in tune, it's not easy to understand him, it's not easy to empathize with him. Could it be that it's not easy because I'm a white woman? Certainly. But I think that something else also comes into play since, although I'm a white woman, on many other occasions - with books, films, TV series - I have empathized without problems with a black person in slavery. How can one not suffer?

However, Nat is not an easy person, regardless of the color of his skin. He made choices that I didn't share. He was moved by motives that I didn't share. He thought and reasoned and drew conclusions that I didn't share.

Nevertheless, I found the novel interesting both because it starts from a real event and because it is based on a written confession that exists. So I'm glad I read it and all in all I feel like recommending it considering also its importance.

Great book! It is filled with numerous biblical allusions throughout, which adds a layer of depth and richness to the story. However, some parts were more engaging than others. Occasionally, I would find myself getting lost as I would zone out. I really wish the third chapter wasn't as long. Styron truly knows how to draw things out, but he is also great at producing vivid visual imagery. It really immerses me in the story, and I love it. However, at times, it can be a bit long-winded. Overall, it is a great read that I would highly recommend to others who enjoy books with a lot of depth and detail.

This was both more entertaining and more graphic than I was anticipating. I had envisioned some sort of dull, fact-by-fact narration of an event in American history. However, this book truly brought Nat Turner to life for me. The author mentions in the foreword that he had very limited sources to draw from when creating the novel, so he took certain liberties.

I have no clue as to why this novel (which is fiction, mind you) is labeled "racist" by so many. I found myself developing a sense of care for Nat. Although I couldn't condone his actions at the end of his journey, I most definitely understood them. I believe Styron dealt fairly with both of Nat's complex sides: a caring, religious, and truly good person, and the man who had simply had enough of the blatant unfairness in his own life and the lives of his fellow blacks. (I don't say slaves because there are examples of injustices towards freed slaves throughout the book). At one point in the book, I almost screamed with rage due to the injustice Nat had to endure at the greedy hands of a so-called man of God.

Injustice and unfairness occur to everyone, with some of us experiencing them more harshly and on a larger scale. I think this is what makes this novel so appealing; every human being can relate to it. I also think Styron's ultimate message to humanity was excellent and a lesson for us all: don't condemn an entire race because of a few individuals.