Pathos and logos

While I am an advocate for reading without the clutter of background, I also am an advocate for filling in the blanks after a first reading.   And no matter the number of times I read the book, the graphic novel just cannot answer all my questions.  While the pictures portray the pathos of the situation, they cannot portray the logos – and without that, a reader doesn’t get a complete picture.  After reading Thomas Gray’s “Confession”, many of my initial questions were answered, and the Baker version became much more accessible.

I was impressed by Gray’s honesty about his prejudice against Nat Turner, and his reasons for writing the Confessions.  I was especially interested in how the bias of Gray would come through.  From the very beginning he marked Turner as a fanatic.   It is clear from his note “To The Public” that Gray is entirely prejudiced against Nat Turner, calling him “a gloomy fanatic … revolving in the recesses of his own dark, bewildered, and overwrought mind, schemes of indiscriminate massacre to the whites.”   Yet, as he records the confession, Gray seems rather objective – almost like a court reporter, simply gathering facts.  We don’t see the editorializing that might have been expected from such a prejudiced reporter, rather we mostly get the facts of the story.  At the very end, again we get some analysis, some editorializing, but for the most part, we seem to be hearing Nat Turner’s point of view.  Gray seems able to distance himself, at least for a short time.

On the other hand, the Baker version is clearly biased in the side of Nat Turner, and we get no sense of distance from the author.  From the Baker version we get the emotional side of the story, the sadness and despair, the horror and the acceptance.  The point of this version is purely to elicit disgust and revulsion, and to base the motivation of Nat Turner in this emotional place.  From the Baker version we get a fuller picture of the awfulness of slavery, and a wider context for the rebellion.  I think it’s a more personal story – there is no attempt to be objective and no attempt to hide the emotional attachment the author has to this story.

 If we had another version, perhaps the photographs might be that other version, we might get yet another perspective, another point of view, and another bias.  It all adds up to a more complete picture.  Neither Baker nor Gray are quite adequate enough on their own, but together they make a more complete, and therefore more compelling, story.