Manmeet Dhami
African American Literature
Argumentative Essay Draft
Humor can be inferred by many as the ability to perceive something as or to be funny or to be amused by. Humor is universal and is factored into every culture. However, humor doesn’t always relate to something comical and pleasingly funny. With the distinguish of the context, it can take a whole other meaning presenting irony and satire. To many, humor is a universal coping mechanism. Individuals find joy in their perception of humor, where in most cases hide the adversity. African American humor is based on perceptions. As defined in “On the Real Side”, Mel Watkins interprets African American humor as,
“the shared ironic vision of a people who, in seeking to establish their place as Americans, have skeptically viewed the gap between appearances and reality and have often found contradiction and absurdity.”
African-American humor shaped and is molded by the slavery experience in America. The complicity of black humor and its impact on America has been ignored for years and ignored by mainstream and the American culture. Watkins refers to African American humor has two different aspects, as one is what is seen in mainstream media and the authentic representation within the black community. This shows a constant racial difference and the struggles African Americans encountered within the media and society.
Conjure Tales by Charles Chesnutt is a fictional based novel that emphasizes the racial issues including slavery and discrimination that were present between the blacks and whites post civil war. Chesnutt incorporates the world of conjuring and other superstition elements to show these tales. In each instance of the tale, a slave or master turns to conjuring powers to help resolve an issue or problem they have encountered. The collections of tales entertain the audience with the world of conjuring but also the relationship between slaves and their masters and blacks and whites. Chesnutt context of the humor he presents exposes the audience to this insight. Using conjure, Chestnuts provides a deep insight into the controversial topic of slavery without using common methods that often disengage the audience.
In a journal entry from 1879, Chesnutt wrote he wanted his work to showcase humor in a way that implements or influences a particular feeling. Chesnutt encountered trouble in regards to this work and implementing it to his reader. He wanted the audience to comprehend the black experience in America. Instead of going head-on with the wrongs, he wanted to encourage the whites to understand the black experience and to influence change while comprehending the hardships they encountered and the truth of slavery. Chestnut wasn't a folklore teller or a folklore artist however from interviewing individuals who were and his recollection from his childhood he compelled his understanding and research to create the collection of Conjure tales.
In a journal article written by Jeannette S. White entitled “Baring Slavery's Darkest Secrets: Charles Chesnutt's "Conjure Tales" as Masks of Truth”, it looked into the struggle and suffering of slavery within conjuring. As it states at the beginning of the article, “masking has been used to impart certain truths that may be unpleasant and or go as otherwise unheard of from the audience.”
Masking keeps the true intentions of the author hidden until the audience uncovers the masking and comes into a perspective of it. An important point to comprehend from the article is as stated,
“Used to combat the ills of plantation life, conjuring becomes in itself a means of survival for the hapless slaves who had little else to sustain them. Ranging the gamut from the grotesque and pathetic to the comic and tragic, the conjure tales expose, under the guise of folklore, the scourge that was slavery. Thus, underlying these fanciful and frequently mystifying works, there is invariably another dimension–the sphere of a nightmare the slaves inhabited. Always, this world emerges as a horribly real one from which there was no exit.”
As stated above, conjuring and witchcraft offer a different route for slaves to enact upon in means of their survival. To offer another option and in a sense hope. Though the tales which uncover slavery in the south seem entertaining to the audience with the conjuring twist, it still showcases how inexcusable it was.
Po’ Sandy is just one of the tales Chesnutt wrote in his novel which entails the life of a slave named Sandy and is one of the prime examples of how Chesnutt uses conjuring to the topic of slavery. Uncle Julius recites the tale of Sandy to John and Annie as the couple decides to use log from the schoolhouse to build a new kitchen for them. Sandy is a hardworking slave who was going through problematic and traumatic life. Through Sandy’s life, as the audience, we can see the lense of slavery and how it creates a traumatizing effect on individuals lives. Sandy spent a majority of his life as a slave which has left him broken inside and left him with nothing. His only connection to his life out of slavery was Tenie, his wife. Sandy regularly complained how he was just an object, with no home, no family and no one besides Tenie. After being informed he was going to be separated from Tenie, Sandy questions the life he lives. Tenie offers to conjure into another being, like an animal. Sandy who decided he wanted to be a stump.
A stump symbolizes the life he was exposed to. As a slave, he was bound to his master and the plantation. As a stump, he’s bounded to the area where he was planted. Sandy expressed how he just wanted to stay, not be separated from Tenie and him not to scare anyone. Things seemed to go well but Sandy is cut down as a tree and it built into a schoolhouse. Sandy’s only connection to life, Tenie dies from the sorrow and Sandy goes against his wishes and begins to haunt within the schoolhouse. In the end, Annie and John leave the schoolhouse alone. Annie felt guilt and the irony presented in the tale and took it to heart. “Passing in the Works of Charles W. Chesnutt” by Susan Prothro Wright and Ernestine Pickens Glass is a collection of evaluations of Charles Chesnutt’s work. In regards to the tale of Po’ Sandy and the masking of slavery it states,
“This slave chooses to live the life of a tree, rather than chance being sent away from his second wife. But he cannot escape his role in life so easily: the tree that is Sandy is cut into planks, which are then used to build a kitchen. Chesnutt is, of course, employing fantastical elements to lighten the horrific events in this story, but the intuitive reader recognizes that he is illuminating how the Old South was literally built by and with the flesh and blood of human beings like Sandy”.(pg. 30)
In summary, the masking of Po’ Sandy story showcases the results of slavery and how it impacts an individual's life. Sandy couldn’t escape his old life, it in a way haunted him and captured him. Though he tries to escape, he can't really and is theoretically bounded there. Also, it illustrates how the South was built upon the work, service, sweat, and blood of the formers slaves.
The topic of slavery may be highly difficult for readers to be engaged however with the use of masking, Chesnutt was able to showcase the life of slaves in the south. In regards to Po’ Sandy, Chesnutt used conjure to implore the struggles the life of slave went into. Through the irony and humor, the audience was able to capture the meaning of his work and their interpretation of the humor implied. Chesnutt style of writing kept the reader engaged and explored the way of humor in his tales.