Praxis Journal Entry 8 -- 10/24/16
Baker’s 2006 graphic novel Nat Turner tells the story of the 1831 slave insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia, led by the book’s namesake—but doesn’t start with Turner’s birth or the days leading up to the insurrection. Instead Nat Turner opens in an African village, with the villagers being attacked by armed slave traffickers. The main character in this section (“Home”) is an unnamed woman, possibly an ancestor of Turner’s. She is captured, branded, transported across the Atlantic, and then sold, after which the book returns to Turner. What is exceptional about Baker’s novel is how he presents Turner’s rebellion as a product of hundreds of years of brutal slavery, and not a result of a singular event in Turner’s life, mental illness, or religious fanaticism (as was assumed by contemporary white people in the aftermath of the insurrection). Portrayals of the rebellion tend to focus almost solely on Turner himself--his visions, his faith, his leadership, his confessions—even though he didn’t lead the rebellion alone (and, from reading Gray’s Confessions, appears to have killed fewer people than some of the other slaves). Whether intentional or not, many portrayals of the rebellion also treat it as an aberration of sorts, as if it’s unfathomable that a slave would violently kill anyone, including women and children.
Baker doesn’t treat Turner’s insurrection as a singular event lead by one man or as an aberration, but instead as a reaction to hundreds of years of brutal enslavement. As I wrote in the preceding paragraph, Nat Turner begins in Africa and follows a slave from her home village to the auction block and then to her descendants on a plantation. Baker literally illustrates every terrible step of that journey with scenes of slaves being whipped, mutilated, and separated from their families. I think Baker argues that, considering the environment Turner was raised in, why wouldn’t he react so violently? Why would he show mercy for the people who owned him, his family, and would (in the white children’s case) continue to perpetuate this cruel system? Baker also treats the rebellion as a community event and highlights the importance of black communities throughout the book. Turner might have led the rebellion, but he wasn’t the sole participant, and his partners were often more vicious than he was. Baker also shows Turner as a child eating with other slave children, sleeping next to his parents and siblings, and later with his own family. True, Turner did sometimes isolate himself for his own spiritual growth, but he wasn’t completely disconnected from his fellow slaves. I think scenes of Turner’s childhood and him together with his family are important because they humanize him and illustrate the closeness of slave communities. I’m thinking the catalyst for the rebellion (as portrayed in the book) was actually Turner’s wife and children being sold—which happened to coincide with the solar eclipse and Turner’s vision of taking up Christ’s burden for humanity. When he killed white families, he kept his family in mind. I don’t think Turner began the rebellion to avenge them, but it’s possible he meant to free them and protect future generations from slavery by finally ending it.