The Sandy Tree
One of the most heartbreaking examples of irony in the collection occurs in the story “Po’ Sandy.” After losing his wife to slave trading, he vows not to lose a second lover and so is conjured into a tree by day so that he can be returned to human form at night. One day when his lover is on loan to another plantation, however, the tree is chopped down to be used as lumber for building a new kitchen.
Actions Speak Louder Than Dialect
The parts of the narrative in which Julius tells a story about the days of slavery are written in dense language appropriating the speaking style of the uneducated patois of the man. Inevitably, most readers confronting this sometimes almost impenetrable dialogue will agree with John that it is the language of an intellect which at least seems inferior to those speaking traditional English. Readers should be cautioned not to feel badly about making this assumption as it is actually the intention of the writer. Chesnutt purposely wants educated readers to assume Julius really is as ignorant and unschooled as his speech implies as this assumption fully serves the purpose increasing the irony when his actions reveal how easily the old man outwits and manipulates the man supposed to be of superior intellect.
Dehumanization
Throughout the collection, the effects of conjuring is often to transform a slave into something other than a human being: a tree, a mule and one slave even develops a strange symbiosis with a grapevine to the point that when the grapevine withers and dies, so does he. One of the most bitter example of irony occurs in the one story where the object of conjuring magic is a white man; an especially brutal breed of slave-driving master. The whole point of this conjuring is to reveal to the master his lack of humanity and so therefore what is the natural transformation to illuminate this point? Neither brute animal nor vegetable and not even mineral: the white man is turned into a black slave to reveal the horrors of the difference between suffering a lack of humanity and actually being dehumanized.
Crop Killer
“The Goophered Grapevine” ends on a note of corrosively critical irony. It is greed that leads a slave master to take advantage of a slave whose very health has been conjured into symbiosis with the life cycle of the grapevine and make more profit off the slave than could ever be dreamed. Except, of course, this is a slave owner and dreams of increasing profit cannot be bounded by normal human desire. And so it is with irony both tragic and fitting that greed leads the master to become duped by a Yankee selling snake oil in the form of a promise to boost the productivity of the grapevine and, as a result of the symbiosis, the slave. The result is a vine that withers and dies…along with the simultaneously withering and death of his the mechanism of his undreamt-of profits: the slave who unwittingly ate the goophered grapes.
Comic Irony
Humor can be derived from much of the irony associated with Julius getting the better of John, but one story in particular produces an especially entertaining bit of blackly comic irony. Although most of the stories Julius tells contain elements of horrifying darkness relative to the life of slavery, it can be argued that the tale most chilling on its own terms is the particularly dark one related in the story “The Gray Wolf’s Ha’nt.” Even if taking outside the environs of plantation slavery, its story of revenge by a father on those accidentally responsible for the murder of his son which results in the conjurer causing a husband to kill his own wife before the conjurer is himself killed by the husband who is left to haunt the woods trapped in the form of a wolf would still be the stuff an effective horror story. The bloodbath which results from the carnage of conjuring in this story is, nevertheless, directly related to the incentive Julius has for telling it. The irony in this case is that he relates this truly gruesome tale of bitter vengeance all for the purpose of protecting his secret supply of sweet honey hidden in those very woods from being discovered by John’s plans to cultivate the area for growing crops.
