The Confessions of Nat Turner: Pulitzer Prize Winner

William Styron had the misfortune to publish "The Confessions of Nat Turner" in the late 1960s. The timing was such that Styron had the odd experience of a) being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the book and b) being shunned by many, black and white, for having had the temerity to put himself in the mind of a black slave when he himself was a white Southerner. The color of Styron's skin doesn't matter anymore than it should for anyone else. "The Confessions of Nat Turner" is a brutal accounting, from Nat Turner's point of view, of the events that led up to the only long-term revolt in the disgraceful history of American slavery. We see the beginnings of Turner's musings when, as a young and extraordinarily intelligent slave, he fights mentally against his enslavement. It's when the dam bursts and he decides to fight physically that his downfall begins. There is a suggestion of perhaps not mental illness, but a messianic complex here in Styron's rendering of Turner. It works, for a character in a novel, but some readers will be taken aback by the fact that Styron makes Turner somehow mentally unstable.As with all books, the uninitiated reader wants to know: is it a good read? It is. It's propulsive and majestic and the kind of book you don't want to end. Styron handles the ending with great delicacy and restraint. "The Confessions of Nat Turner" is a sustained and detailed portrait of a compelling figure in early American history. It is a masterpiece.

The Confessions of Nat Turner is one of Styron's most powerful works, a fascinating exercise in imagination. Styron begins with a true historical event -- a slave rebellion that struck terror into the hearts of white southerners before ultimately being quelled. Styron sees in the psychological tinder box ignited by the rebellion, and in its leader, Nat Turner, a little-understood passion play. Critics who complain that Styron doesn't answer some historical questions: "Gee, Nat's owner didn't treat him so bad, why'd he rebel?" miss the point. What fascinates Styron, and a careful reader, is what the fact of rebellion does to the minds and emotions of those it touches. Besides, anyone who finishes Styron's novel without a sense of why Turner led the rebellion wasn't reading very carefully; the whole novel turns on Styron's hypothetical answer to this question. One of the central conceits of the book is Styron's imagination that Turner could have been fueled by his sense that he had been chosen by God to lead his fellow slaves in an uprising. Styron paints a powerful picture of one driven by the conviction -- whether divinely inspired or delusional -- that he is a vengeful avatar called upon by a higher power to wreak vengeance on the perceived enemies of God. There is an obvious parallel here to the Harper's Ferry uprising led by John Brown (whom Russell Banks, in Cloudsplitter, depicts as similarly driven by mania), as well as to figures like Joan D'Arc. Styron, who wrote a moving memoir discussing his own struggle with mentally illness, has a special fascination with, and sensitivity to, such issues.

I have always admired Styron's bravery in handling difficult subjects. Styron is a novelist in the classic tradition, and is concerned with depth of theme and pyschological motivation--two things that are sneered at in todays academic climate. Yes, it is a problem straying into the political arena--but Styron achieves the important task of humanising Nat Turner--making him real, and not some dusty abstract fictional personage--consigned to the footnotes of History. Racism has many faces, and as I read Styron's novel, I became angrier and angrier, as the palpable, grinding and dehumanising aspects of America's slave legacy was unfolded in Nat's story. The ending was incredibly powerful. I urge people, of all creeds and colours, to read this book and keep an open mind. Styron is NOT a racist, but a HUMANIST.The story he tells has eternal relevance, and is told with integrity and great literary skill. A book should stand alone, but I hope some day that this novel is made into a film. Its story is too important to remain locked within the literary arena.

It's a shame that this book has been shrouded in accusations of racism and bigotry, because it detracts from the simple fact that "Nat Turner" is a beautifully written, impressively narrated and horribly affecting novel. Styron's Nat is a fully realized, memorable and finely-drawn character, whose insights into slavery and human nature in general, linger long after the closing words. In the end he emerges, not so much as a hero, but as a human pushed to the brink by circumstances beyond his control. An essential read for anyone who enjoys novels which plumb the depths of the human condition.

Written in 1968, Styron's "Confessions" delves deep into the psychology behind Nat Turner's 1831 slave revolt. Almost unbearable in its graphic violence and Biblically-dimensioned heartbreak, the novel (for it *is* fictional) has Turner telling the whole story in painfully honest detail. Styron neither defends Turner nor paints him as crazy; he is less interested in pointing out right or wrong than in trying to understand the broad ironies of the system of slavery and its effects on the people who ran it and were subject to it. Styron's Nat Turner is a man who is both educated and destroyed by his masters; he is both uplifted and misled by the Bible. His hatred is not fueled by the hatred of whites, but by the pity of whites. And when he kills, he is only able to commit one physical murder, though he takes responsibility for 60. The book is often painful to read, especially for one who might think that race relations today have little to do with 19th-century slavery. But in its wealth of detail and its ability to enter into the mind of a complex and criminal mind, it is unique, and should be required reading for every self-termed patriotic American.