Category Archives: Week 11 – Nat Turner

The Contrast in Medium

Early in my comparison of Nat Turner, the graphic novel by Kyle Baker, and “The Confessions of Nat Turner, The Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, VA,” the historic testimony, I realized a contrast in authenticity between the historic document and the graphic novel. Even though both items have the same intent, to retell the events, the graphic novel’s format makes it less believable. The artist’s creative license and personal influence seeps through the pages and colors the events with his imagination, but the historic testimony is simple letters on a page. No interpretation is given, no illustrations are used to provide examples, and no heroic context is expressed in the testimony.  The Clerk, Edmund J. Lee, even provides an articulate introduction defending the authenticity of his report, stating that he will “publish them, with little or no variation, from his [Turner’s] own words” (4). Exempting the “little” for clerical errors and edits for clarity, the work should be considered the most accurate interpretation from Turner’s perspective. However, it should not be confused with a historic record of the events. Turner’s confessions are circumspect at best; Lee even comments on this point by saying “If Nat’s statements can be relied on” when he is discussing the possible value to the confessions. The authenticity of the record should not be in doubt, but the words of Turner may be questionable. When he says “I heard a voice” and “the Spirit appeared to me” (9-10) is reminds me of other killers who believed their actions were directed by a higher power. I also question the truth of his words when he relates the details of each murder, as he was only able to kill a few people as his sword was too blunt and the others in his group were too efficient in their work. Most of this is accounted for in Baker’s graphic novel, even the scenes from page 15-16, which seem to be lacking in literary detail, are covered by Baker’s illustrations of the soldier’s confrontation with Turner’s group.  The main point I find to be disconcerting with Baker’s illustration is the depiction of a heroic, superhuman, struggle of the murderers against the soldiers. The account on page 16 gives little details about the fight, but Baker’s illustrations add details not present in the testimony. It is the addition of actions and emotions which makes Baker’s graphic novel questionable when compared to the true testimony.

Side note: the photographs taken on location of Turner’s Rebellion elicit a strong sense of nostalgia. It is hard to look at them an imagine all of the atrocities that occurred in these peaceful scenes. I did not get the same sense from the Baker’s illustrations, possibly because he included people in his illustrations where most of the photographs were only of the landscape and empty buildings. Turner’s bible, open on the stump of a tree, is a particularly imposing image, as the book’s content was the impetus to his rebellion.

Tracing Activity Processing + Nat Turner on the 2nd Read

First, I want to do some quick processing of the tracing activity we did in class last week. Then, I’ll get to my second reading of Nat Turner and how it differed from the first.

 

I think, in theory at least, the tracing activity is really cool. Forces students to slow down, think carefully about what they’re looking at, maybe observe things about the page or illustration they hadn’t noticed previously. But for me (and I’m not sure if it was the page I chose), it didn’t work. I got so focused on the tracing (YES! A TIME FOR ME TO DO SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T NECESSARILY REQUIRE THINKING!), that I really didn’t end up making any observations about the way the page was illustrated. Instead, I spent time thinking about how I could make the page more beautiful—shading the corners of each box neatly, blurring the edges with my fingers.

 

I think where this activity became interesting for me as a teacher was in the textual intervention part. Again, the page I chose might not have been the best—the text I ended up adding to the page did little to further my understanding of the novel. My annotations merely reflected what I’d already observed about the page. But for some reason, even though it didn’t work for me in the student’s chair, I’d still consider using it in my classroom. I often argue with myself about stuff like this, about what’s good in theory and what’s good in practice. It’s a fine line, as we all know, in the classroom. And in the college classroom, the best intentions don’t get you far (your freshman don’t care if it was great in theory, it should interest them and further their knowledge now, so that they can get on with their lives and feel as though they’ve learned something). But still, I’m intrigued by the premise, and wonder if my experience says less about the activity itself, and more about my inability to choose a useful page or my interest in zoning out. What would happen if we directed groups of students to trace particular pages? Then compare annotations? Might that deepen the discussion in a different way? We saw this a bit in our own classroom, when more than one student annotated the same page…

 

In terms of my second NT reading, I started thinking quite a bit about how this thing is put together artistically.  I’m interested in the fact that Baker includes blocks of source material, along side this image-narrative, and that he never really changes that model. I can imagine some of the source material spread out along pages, and wonder why he chose to keep the source material together. My theories: he wants to emphasize that the material is a primary source (rather than his own text), he wants the source material to have its own space (un-interrupted by images, or other artistic interpretations), the source material together in one block slows the reader, asking them to dwell on the page.

 

The other major take-away from my second read is the difference in illustrations from page to page. Some illustrations have a sketch feel, while others seem more polished, almost water-colored, and hyper-detailed. I can’t figure out if there’s a pattern (sketched pictures show up in certain scenarios, and more detailed images show up in others?) or not, but it is definitely something I paid attention to this time, that I hadn’t considered in my first go-round, perhaps BECAUSE of the tracing activity we completed in class?

Changing My Mind

I know I should probably spend this week writing on the required reading materials, especially in regard to how Nat Turner stacks up to reality—to the best of our own understanding. To tell you the truth, though, I’m still hung up on last week’s conversation about “storytelling” and “literature.” In hindsight our discussion was incredibly nebulous. I’m not sure if that was more of the fact that we were grappling with very esoteric terms or just that I didn’t get a full night sleep the day before. I must admit I probably wasn’t the clearest in my thoughts that night in some respect, but that is the beauty of these blog posts and their existence as a sort of big red reset button on our thoughts for the week or the previous one.

I think the most interesting question that was never asked last week was in regard to the series of woodcut illustrations composed into novel format. What if Gods’ Man wasn’t “A Novel in Woodcuts” but simply “A Novel?” How much would that change our judgment of the book’s cover before even opening it? Does such a statement (and it most certainly is a statement in and of itself) change the way we read it? I’d like to think so, because when I see “A Novel in Woodcuts” I see a transfixion of what makes a novel a “novel”—that is, sequential prose of a given length—and adapting that to carved illustrations. To outright call itself a novel would be much more deliberate call to overturn genre conventions, but that may have not been the author’s intention.

Perhaps, ultimately, there is no harm in calling Nat Turner a novel or calling it literature. So let’s call it that. And what of it? The sky doesn’t fall. The sea does not run red. Season three of Game of Thrones still airs without a hitch.

I believe I was a bit harsh in my first response regarding Nat Turner in suggesting that there’s not much in the way of the written word being worked with in it to be considered literature. It was rightfully brought up by someone else last week before class had started that the confession and the way it unfolded as described in the back of the book was different from how Baker integrated the confession into the progression of the “graphic novel.”

In a certain sense, then, Baker is working with the source material—literature by definition—in ways that can be arguably seen as literary. Visual rhetoric and expression may overpower the piece, but there is certainly an engagement with the written “discourse” of Nat Turner and his multiple representations across various source materials that Baker is directly reacting to—if not responding to. If it’s unfair to call it literature, it is at least inviting the reader to participate in ways that are “literary” interpretations.

Nat Turner, Week II

Background: I always read the responses that are posted on the blog, but this week I found myself more eager to do so than usual. Our inability to discuss the content of Nat Turner in any depth last week made me especially curious to see which areas of the book we were each individually wrapped up in.

Reading through the posts of those of you who posted before me, I found that a lot of the mental threads I had been playing with had already been picked up. I wanted to add my thoughts in a way that would connect and respond to these other posts but I had to admit that I didn’t have any solutions, either. And, man, the post in which I tried to unite all of these ideas started getting long. Obscenely long. So I’m going to take a cue from one of Jacque’s earlier posts and throw out some of my unconnected ideas in bulletpoints. Let’s pretend this is a literary homage to the pulsing instability of the Nat Turner graphic novel.

• Mimi has referred to the “gap” that the graphic novel leaves between “a gifted child’s ethereal piety and its transmutation into unsparing violence.” I was similarly struck by the ‘choppiness’ of the text. I feel that this issue is not limited to the content of the book, however, and that, in large part, Baker’s artistic decisions are responsible for the effect. The style of the illustration used seems to further fictionalize the tale and I wonder about the (literally) black-and-white presentation of a conflict that exists almost entirely in the grey area that lies between stock notions of right and wrong.

• Robb mentions the rage that characterizes the violence on pages 174-178. Because these pages were brought to my attention in light of my own consideration of the graphic novel as a medium, I began to think about the fact that each episode of the story – every frame, every stroke of charcoal – resulted from a deliberate choice on the part of the author. If there is rage in these pages, it cannot be reduced to the rage of the characters; it is Kyle Baker’s rage every bit as much as it is Nat Turner’s.

• Several students have touched on the uncertainty that familiarity with this week’s historical documents caused them. This issue brings me back to the idea that I attempted to articulate last week about the appropriateness of a medium for a story and the way that the choice of medium influences the reader’s understanding of the text. Is Nat Turner a historical record? Is it an example of historical fiction? Do the answers to these questions change the way in which teachers and other readers approach the work? Should they?

• Finally, one issue kept bothering me when going through Gray’s base text: Why do we have this tendency to think of historical writings as factual simply because they were written during or soon after the event they describe? Why do we, informed readers who routinely question the media reports we encounter in this day and age, suddenly lose our ability to consider the myriad of biases, estimations, and outright lies that can (and do!) make their way into historical documents?

Who Was Nat Turner and What Went Missing?

In creating a dramatic account of Nat Turner, Kyle Baker could have started from any point in the story.  That he chose to begin with a portrayal of communal life in Africa, with the rape of a civilization by marauders, then the shaving, branding, neck irons and claustrophobia of a chained voyage across the Atlantic provides the depth and indelible dimension of a saga.  His graphics move us along with dramatic power and credibility.  At the same time, some vital information is missing from this vivid interpretation of a historic incident.  What really motivated Nat Turner?  This week’s reading stimulates the question: what dam burst in his active mind? 

Kenneth Greenberg notes how the psyche of a slave could be demolished, particularly (and ironically) in the case of a more ambiguously close and paternalistic relationship between a slave and master.  I wish we knew what really happened to Nat.  What traumas did he suffer?  What conflicts seared his piercing intelligence?  The record leaves critical gaps.  Either Turner withheld a full accounting from Thomas Gray, hewing to his own beatific vision just prior to death, or Gray excised any particulars that might have shone a contemptible light on the white masters and an inhumane system in our nation.

I began to wonder.  How old Nat was when his father ran away?  Why did Nat himself run away and then decide to return?  What kind of work did he perform, and what did he witness?  Was he or a family member abused?  Beyond his religiosity, what motives prompted him to lead other slaves to put their own lives on the line in an act that was doomed to futility?

It seems that Nat himself did not do a lot of the killing.  The sword he carried was a blunt and ineffective instrument.  Nat seemed to have strong survival skills.  At what point did something snap?    

Baker’s account raises breathtaking awareness.  However, the historical record with which he had to work leaves many questions unanswered.  I will never forget the expressions on the eye-popping faces of the black and white characters, and the scope of human cruelty and suffering that Baker depicts with fluidity.  I concluded that his book is a work of art, even though it is incomplete and flawed as a story and history.  

Robb Garner – Response Week 11

The introduction to “The Confessions of Nat Turner: Text and Context” is a wonderful read not only in and of itself (how it serves to inform and, for us, contextualize Baker’s Nat Turner) but as a formulae for any historical treatment of a text.  I found the historicity of Kenneth Greenberg’s article to be this perfect balance between a well-grounded and yet truly expansive effort.  By ‘historicity’ I mean a discussion about how authentic a historical document can be and in what ways that historical text can be authenticated and/or contextualized with other historical documents.  I studied history at university, and I wish I had read this sooner.  The line, “The act of recounting, whether personal or historical, often involves transforming the people or events of the past into objects we can use in the present” (26), is a great summation of the study of history (as opposed to “the learning of history”).

With this text in mind—and some of those great, sepia-tinted photographs wandering around in my mind—I approached Nat Turner for a third time without very many expectations.  I tried to stop forcing myself to pay closer attention to some pages than I was inclined to give them (which was part of my project for the second reading), but on the other hand I wanted to donate extra attention to those pages which I felt were the most powerful.  Most of these were the ones that stood out to me in the beginning or the ones that our classmates traced and discussed last class (I trust the intuition of a first read and the collective wisdom of the class).  One of the things I discovered early on was that graphic novels function more like poems than tradition novels, at least in regards to how we traditionally read poems and novels.  This isn’t a necessarily esoteric insight—graphic novels have a select number of images as poems do words, as opposed to the horde of words, images, characters and changes that typify novels—but I enjoyed making the realization.  The picture of the noose around the woman’s foot in the beginning was especially moving to me this time around.  Unlike most, I didn’t find the violence of the rebellion especially distasteful, and each time I’ve read this book I’ve found myself rooting for Nat Turner pretty freely.  But the depiction of rage on pages 174-178 altered that view; I was reminded that this was a historical retelling of some kind, that this was a product of rage—violence begetting violence, suffering over suffering.  In the end, redemption is found (or consummated) by Turner’s death.  Maybe that is the only kind of redemption possible for this kind of story—a movement away from the Old Testament to the New.  On the other hand, I wonder if it was not so much the result itself—which, as Greenberg points out, was relatively minimal on the scale of world history—as it is the story which has endured (if not prominently) for such a long time.  It doesn’t seem strange to me that Nat Turner, who must have had a great love and reverence for the written word, would have passed on his story even into the hands of a miserly white lawyer.  Greenberg’s text also made me think about what historical context I tried, both the first, second, and third times I read it, to put Kyle Baker’s Nat Turner in.  This, in turn, made me think about how that immediate contextualization speaks to my education and my history.

Finally, the big insight I took away from this third, contextualized reading was that I finally felt comfortable enough with the text to criticize it.  I began to think: I needed words here.  And: This is unnecessary and messes up the linguistic flow of the visual text.  And I began to want more of the story and different elements in it here and there.  A few times I felt that the whole story should have just been visually represented.  I believe what Greenberg says, about how retelling a story transforms it, in some way, into the now (just like traditions renew the history out of which they were born), and a lot of times I felt that Baker’s retelling was not fictionalized enough; he did not fill in the Nat Turner’s narrative gaps in the creative ways that I wanted them filled in.  Why didn’t he tell the dynamic story of Nat Turner and his wife?  Did Nat Turner have friends?  What about his suffering?  Why was the intimacy of the slave-master connection not touched on at all?  (In fact, the text presented a very defined and distant establishment.)  Now, I don’t think I’d be able to defend many of my critiques because I know nothing about art or graphic novels.  When it came to thinking that a certain representation was misleading or too underdeveloped, I became a little frustrated by not having the vocabulary to voice what I felt.

The best moment in the book, I think, has to be the mural on pages 102-103.  There’s this descent of the wrathful holy spirit through a lightning bolt—the spirit of Jehovah, God of the Old Testament, the one of fire and brimstone who took away the first born sons of Egypt so that the Jews could be freed from their bondage—and Turner’s arms raised like they would be in prayer but with balled fists, and the tempest behind him, and his scream.  The page got me thinking about that sermon, “I am a sinner in the hands of an angry God,” and some of the stories in Genesis that I don’t but should know by heart.  Then, because Greenburg mentioned that he promised invulnerability to rebels that “held crab claws in their mouths” (p.17), I spent over an hour researching the failed slave rebellion leader Gullah Jack.  Afterward, I wondered if all or any of this is really admissible.  I mentioned this in my first post on Nat Turner, but I still don’t know what sort of textual history this story wants to be placed in or read with.  Perhaps, though, the neat thing about graphic novels is that you are free to bring your own textual history into them in a way that is usually not possible in traditional text-mediums.  At least I was free to do this because I didn’t have any other comic references.  And I’d be willing to defend this point on the grounds that it made the work that much more enjoyable.

Background and Bias

 

Nat Turner’s is a complex story, which I knew little to nothing about prior to my experience with Nat Turner in graphic narrative form.  The background reading for this week though left me, like Joy, wondering about whether background would’ve been a help or a hindrance in this situation.

It probably says more about me as a reader than Baker as a writer/illustrator/designer, but I didn’t realize until the articles this week that Nat Turner’s Confession was not only not written by Nat Turner himself, but by a man who had suspect motive and not altogether trustworthy credibility.  That was one of the most eye opening things that the readings for this week, and it makes me wonder if it’s possible to tell Nat’s story in anything but an extremely biased way since the main source we have on the event may be a biased account masquerading as something objectively truthful.

Despite not being sure about the interpretation of events, the readings and photographs for this week lent a sense of reality to what was otherwise a slightly unreal, otherworldly tale.  Actually seeing the photographs of the areas where the rebellion took place, especially done in a similar coloring to the illustrations in Baker’s book, made it seem even more real for me.  Too, there were parts where Baker’s illustrations combined with the “Confession” left me feeling more confused than anything else.  The account of Nat knowing things that had happened before his birth was one place that left me feeling that there must be more to the story, and Kenneth Greenberg’s piece helped me fill in that gap.  It doesn’t seem that we know a great deal about what exactly that event was that Nat recalled, but it became more clear to me that everyone who knew Nat saw that time, and other events, as markers that Nat was destined for greatness.

I’m not sure where all that leaves me about knowing what to do with background information.  I enjoyed my first read of the story in more of a purely for the story sort of way—I was trying to understand what was going on, rather than trying to do any sort of in-depth interpretation.  And I liked that.  But, I also like reading it again after developing more of an understanding of what was happening, looking for places that Gray’s influence may have slipped into the account, and looking for places where Baker had to make an interpretive decision.  This worked well for this sort of situation where the readers can probably be trusted to actually go back and read the main text a second time.  I don’t know that it would be possible to approach a story this way every time, but I do think “withholding” background information at the beginning can be a positive way of reading a story.

The influence of background information

Joy Wagener

While I was reading the primary sources and looking at photos from the Turner rebellion, I was wondering whether this material brought positive light to my first reading of Nat Turner, or if my first reading was better because I had zero context. It’s hard to say, actually.  When I first read it, I was literally in shock, jaw agape, when I saw images of severed hands and heads with blood smeared across the frames. With each turn of the page, I felt as shocked as Nat’s victims must have felt when awakened by the shouts of the murderous mob.  I felt sympathy for the white men, but I also could feel Nat’s pent-up rage and discontent.  However, now that I have so much background and context for this story, I feel more enlightened about the bias of Kyle Baker, but also surprisingly skeptical of Thomas Gray’s motives and reliability.

In the article by Greenberg (“The Confessions of Nat Turner: Text and Context”), the author mentioned that Gray was poor and in need of money. He was not Nat’s lawyer. There is no evidence that this testimony was ever read in court. Gray’s motive seems to be completely monetary which calls into question the reliability of the “confession.”  Another interesting point Greenberg brought up was the strange use of language Nat presumably used in his confession—ie, his eloquent way of stating things which would have been outside of his vocabulary. If these are Gray’s words and not Nat’s, then the story is significantly impacted.  Also, why would Nat feel comfortable enough to open up on Gray?

While my first read of the novel was simplistic and filled with my gasping, my second read created many more questions for me about the truthfulness of the story—in the language, the interpretation, and in Nat’s “confession” of facts.  Did Gray alter events in his recording? Did his motives to make money overreach the truth and facts? I find my reading of Nat Turner forever altered by these questions and my considerations of their impact.

Confession of a Tardy Blogger

Just realized I missed last week’s blog.  Please depict me with Scott McCloud’s severe zigzag lines.  Puddles of ink around darkly shaded cheekbones and eye bags highlight a face in tension, which dominates the frame.  The background is busy.  What would signal my inner state of mind?  Perhaps piles of notebooks around a computer, a basket of dirty laundry and dishes that cry out for washing.  At this point, I would rather read a graphic novel. 

Nat Turner surprised me.  I did not think I would like this pictorial form of literature; I was a skeptic.  Caricatures are bound to be superficial conveyances, I thought. 

In fact, the “information density” to which Erik Rabkin refers applies to this work of art, which moved me deeply.  Images of outrage are superimposed upon the reader’s imagination.  I cannot forget the neck irons, a busted drum, curling whips, a bawling baby tossed to sharks, and human cargo crammed into the bowels of a creaking ship.  The images reflect the “jarring combinations” that McCloud writes about.  If Kyle Baker’s narrative is not linear, historically minute or fully realized, it nevertheless arouses awareness and shocking emotional power.  A historical saga is humanized.

I refer to an NPR American Masters TV program on Philip Roth last night.  Did anyone else catch it?  At age eighty, this prolific novelist remains reflective, articulate and active.  Quoting Chekhov, Roth said that the mission of literature is the proper presentation of a problem, and not its solution.  “You invite understanding,” he said.  “And often you get it wrong.  That’s how you know you’re alive.” 

Kyle Baker’s depiction of the forces that generated a bestial insurrection may not be fully coherent.  For example, I found a disjunction between a gifted child’s ethereal piety and its transmutation into unsparing violence.  As a reader, I puzzled over this gap.  But my eyes returned again and again to the images.  Baker takes us on a journey, his variegated frames invite us into the abusive world and minds of slaves, and he makes us participate in a narrative of degradation, guilt and shame that occurred here in Virginia in our own nation.  His graphic work invites our engagement and it stimulates more questions, if not pat explanations or solutions.

 Much more compelling than laundry and dishes.