White Power
Perhaps the most subtle use of imagery in the novel occurs in the scene which brings together Judge Judge Straight, Dr. Green, George Tryon and Dave. Dave is the Doctor’s black “boy” who runs errands which invariably don’t live up to the physician’s so-called high standards of excellence set by the lack of the 13th Amendment. The outright racist Doctor belittles Dave to his face and insults in his entire race behind his back when alone with Tryon. The conversation eventually turns to the subject of a beautiful unnamed black daughter of a local woman which, unknown to Tryon, is his finance. Judge Straight—aware of the circumstances, but far more tolerant than of the racial divide than the Doctor subtly tries to move the conversation off topic. Tryon says little, but a narrative peek into his mind reveals yet a different response: disgust, but not with the Doctor’s racism. Rather, Tryon is more disgusted by the doctor’s lack of decorum in discussing the alleged beauty of a black woman in the same conversation which has included his own wife.
More to the point: Tryon’s thought specifically find distaste in being in the same room in which a discussion is taking place at the same time as he is thinking of his beautiful white bride-to-be. The implication of this scene is extremely allusive and subtle even for imagery which is, by definition, a means of applying meaning indirectly. The treatment by the doctor of Dave reveals in full bloom his deep-seated racist attitudes, yet the way he talks about this unidentified young black woman reveals the hypocrisy underlying his stated view that of the inferiority of the negro race. The Judge has demonstrated that he is not an outright racist, but his reaction to the Doctor is indicative of how racism persists due not only to explicit prejudice, but to good men who call bad men on their deeds. Meanwhile, Tryon is represents that aspect of white society which perpetrates racism precisely because they have no account to interact with other racism. The imagery within this scene is nothing more nor less than a presentation in miniature of how racism manages to persist a generational pestilence.
"An Evening Visit"
The chapter titled “An Evening Visit” is John Warwick’s first return home since he left to start life anew by passing as a white man. The purpose of the visit is to convince his sister to come back home with him and also begin a new life passing as white. The chapter is a masterful demonstration of the power of imagery to underline a theme. The chapter commences with John arriving at his old home behind the cedars in the night’s darkness which protects his secret new identity. When he tries to open the gate to the property, he think it defective because it won’t open before remembering the secret trick it always took: symbolic of his no longer being the man who grew up here. His secret identity is then used with his mother as he first pretends to a man with a message from her son. Listening to the story of his life as a white man in another town enraptures both mother and sister as if they listening to someone read a fictional story. The language that is used in this chapter serves to deepen the sense of distance and disconnect between the John who left and the one who has returned. He is now representative of the possibility of an “escape from captivity” from “a seemingly hostile world” from which “circumstances had shut them out” but his return now seems to offer for his sister an “escape from captivity” in which she is destined to remain “under the shadow of some cloud which clearly shut them out from the better society of the town.”
Ivanhoe
One of the iconic examples of romance prose is invested heavily as imagery in the novel. In the upper class white society in which John is successfully passing as white, the romantically unrealistic portrayal of Middle Ages chivalry presented in Walter Scott’s novel has become the model upon a typical higher class social event which even takes its name from Ivanhoe. As one attendee frames the changes necessarily made to replicate Jolly Olde Englande: “It is a South Carolina renaissance which has points of advantage over the tournaments of the olden time.” It is, in other words, a trick; a deception; a fraud.” It is imagery foreshadowing the comeuppance of George Tryon who is very accepting of certain types of deception; less so of others.
Diction
This was Chesnutt’s first published novel after a successful enough career writing short stories to publish two very successful collections. Chesnutt became the first African-American writer to ever actually make his living from writing fiction with those stories which were are today considered the peak of a very successful genre: dialect stories. Usually at least half those stories were told using slave dialect. Such dialogue is far more judicious in the novel; it is used by the author as imagery to create a sharp, distinctive dividing line between those who have no hope of passing for white and those who can:
"You ain't gwine ter be gone long, is you, Miss Rena?"
"Oh, no, Frank, I reckon not. I'm supposed to be just going on a short visit. My brother has lost his wife, and wishes me to come and stay with him awhile, and look after his little boy."
