The Goophered Grapevine
“The Goophered Grapevine” is almost all metaphor and entire papers can be written about its allegorical meaning. With the exception of the absolutely astounding masterpiece “Dave’s Neckliss” this story is the most perfectly coherent story Chesnutt ever published. After unwittingly eating from the poisoned grapevine, a newly arrived slave to the plantation named Henry literally takes on the seasonal cycle of the grapes: fresh and energetic in the spring, but by fall becoming withered. The master of the plantation takes advantage of this to sell him off at a high price at the height of the growth season only to buy him back at a bargain rate later in the year. The literal transformation of Henry thus becomes a jaw-dropping metaphor for how slaves are indistinguishable from the work they do, dehumanized, depersonalized and comprehensively alienated from any economic connection to the profit they produce.
Sandy
Sandy also becomes a metaphor for not just the dehumanizing aspect of slavery, but in particular the exploitation of slaves as economic resource. Sandy is conjured into a tree in an effort to ensure he is not separate from another wife, but things don’t turn out as planned. When the woman he loves who is also charged with protecting the tree is loaned out to another plantation, the tree is chopped down to be used for lumber. So, both metaphorically and literally, Sandy becomes a natural resource to be used for constructing a kitchen on the plantation.
John AND Annie
John and Annie are a couple from the North who have moved South and bought the old plantation on which Uncle Julius used to be a slave. John is technical the narrator of the stories, but inevitably the story-within-the-story becomes narrated by Uncle Julius. This structure transforms the couple as a couple into metaphor in which they serve a particular purpose at the end each story. John becomes symbolic of the white man (reader) who either does not fully understand the irony at work in the tales or else refuses to fully admit how much he understands while Annie usually reveals an insight or at least a willingness to admit greater insight. The novel’s structure is such that the subtle relations of power going on between Julius, John and Annie are intended to be a metaphor for how white readers are expected by the author to respond to the stories. One can read them on a certain level without critical consideration and completely miss their point. Those readers who are like Annie—who are literal incarnations of her more critical listening skills—will see through to the skill with which Chesnutt and Julius are indistinguishable masters of manipulation.
Just John
On his own, John also inhabits a completely different metaphorical sphere. Unlike Annie, John is the de fact narrator of every one of the stories in this collection. As previously stated, however, once the actual centerpiece of the narrative begins, Julius literally becomes the voice telling the story, but the teller. In other words, if this were a factual account, John would not just be physically sitting down to put pen to paper, but when writing he would be recreating the story as told by Julius right down to the unconventional spelling to recreate the dialect and speech patterns of the old man. As a listener to the stories of Julius, John is the flip side of Annie as a metaphorical coin. As the teller of the stories of Julius, John takes on the symbolic role of the white American being the auditor of the black narrative and as the auditor of the black narrative he then transforms into a metaphor for the entire historical reality that so much of what history has had to say about the African-American experience has been told not by a black person, but a white person.
The Plantation
The plantation becomes perhaps the most expansive—as well as the most subtle—metaphor in the collection. Like the narrative themselves, the plantation operates on a dual level of consciousness. On the one hand, it is the site of pure inhuman evil where all the stories about slavery and conjuring that Uncle Julius tells took place. At the same time, the plantation also figures prominently in the contemporary post-Reconstruction world in which it is owned by John and Annie. As Northerners with no connection—by blood or legalities—to the former ownership, they thus represent the post-slavery oppression of former slaves after emancipation. Uncle Julius toiled his entire life on the farm and under normal fair and equitable circumstances would therefore be able to reap at least partial benefits of estate laws or at the very least homesteading laws. Instead, he must use his guile to manipulate claims of “ownership” to parts of the plantation he has become invested in. This makes the plantation nothing more nor less than a metaphor for America itself.
