Manipulation and Trickery in "The Passing of Grandison"

The cast of Charles Chestnutt’s “The Passing of Grandison” varies in race, age, and gender but in one way, they all act the same. Each of Chestnutt’s unique characters can be classified as a manipulator. Each character tries to enact power over other characters but ultimately each of these characters fall short with one exception. Ironically, the only character that is able to completely manipulate another is the character with the least amount of power: Grandison. Throughout the story, Chestnutt shows the reader a variety of different instances of failed manipulation and trickery to lead up to the ultimate climax of the story, when Grandison escapes with his family and friends.

The first manipulation in the story is laid out in the first full sentence explaining that Dick Owens’ actions were “done to please a woman.” This woman is Charity Lomax and her requests of Dick are the genesis of the entire plot. She plays on Dick’s desire to be with her in order to get him to act as she wants him to act. There is no tone of compromise in her dialogue with Dick. She lays out a clear ultimatum: “I’ll never love you, Dick Owens, until you have done something.” Her words are the persuasive element that cause Dick to try to free one of his father’s slaves. In fact, it is actually Charity who prods Dick to free one of his own slaves rather than someone else’s. Her actions clearly manipulate Dick into action with the intended goal of marrying a reformed man. However, this is certainly not what Charity gets. Really, Charity wants a man who wants to “dare something for humanity” but she gets Dick, who does “dare something” but it is not for humanity. He dares to try to free Grandison for Charity’s “love and affection.” He doesn’t want to help the world. He wants to marry Charity and, he does. Charity’s manipulation of Dick got the proper end results, but he certainly did not undergo any type of glorious transformation like she had wanted.

Motivated by Charity, Dick attempts to control the actions of two of the story’s other characters. First, he creates a fake desire to travel so that his farther will suggest a trip. Dick’s feigned spontaneity allows his father to unsuspectingly suggest that he bring Tom along on the trip. However, Dick’s trick doesn’t go all according to plan and when the Colonel agrees insists that Dick bring Grandison instead, the reader sees another failed attempt at controlling another individual, another plot gone awry.

Dick’s second manipulation, drawing most of the focus of the narrative, occurs when he tries to direct Grandison into running away. He drags Grandison to Canada and practically force feeds him abolition. Dick does everything in his power to try to motivate Grandison to run away but it all seems for naught. It seems that, he can lead a slave to Canada, but he can’t make him free; that needs to come from Grandison. Furthermore, after Dick does finally manage to get rid of Grandison, he is not able to make him stay away; Grandison comes home months after being left in Canada. Dick is helpless to manipulate Grandison into doing his will. Though Grandison does eventually leave, it is at his own behest, not as a result of Dick’s trickery.

It seems that Grandison’s reticence to run away comes from his respect for his slave life under Colonel Owens. He directly tells the Colonel that “I sh’d jes’ reckon I is better off, suh den tem low-down free niggers, suh!” Owens treats Grandison with an elevated level of respect for a slave. He gives him rum and tobacco to keep Grandison happy. Until the twist at the end of the story, it appears that Owens’ kind tactics have worked and that Grandison really does feel so thankful towards the Colonel that he would choose slavery over freedom. However, the reader eventually learns that this is not true and that Grandison is simply waiting for the perfect moment to flee. Colonel Owens’ treatment of Grandison is yet another example Chestnutt gives of one character’s failed manipulation of another.

In the first four sections of the story, Chestnutt establishes a pattern. He shows over and over again that trickery does not work. At first it appears that the moral of this story might be something along these same lines, that dishonesty and deception never work. However, in the end the reader sees that it does work out, but only from the character who is least suspected of trickery. Grandison is the only one whose manipulation comes to fruition when he and his eight closest family members escape. Grandison played the role of the loyal slave so well that he was put into a position where escape for himself and his friends would be possible. The moral behind the story drastically shifts after this breakout. Instead of teaching of a lesson, Chestnutt has given a depiction of a reversal as old as the Bible. “The Passing of Grandison” is a story about the last becoming the first (Mat. 20:16), about the chief becoming the servant (Mat. 20:27). “The Passing of Grandison” is ultimately a story about the trickster becoming the tricked.

<3 vs Conscience

“[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is] a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat.”

—Mark Twain, Notebook, 1895.

There is a reason that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is written from the first person point of view. Twain wants the readers to be able to see the thoughts passing through Huck’s mind. He wants the readers to follow Huck’s internal development just as Huck and Jim follow the path of the Mississippi. Huck’s opinion of Jim (as person or property) is constantly changing, flowing back and forth. Huck fights an internal battle between his “deformed conscience,” the view of Jim as property instilled in Huck by society, and his “sound heart,” the view of Jim as a friend, and fellow human being that Huck feels to be true. Though Huck’s heart ultimately triumphs over his social conscience, it is not without much fluctuation, in either direction.

When Huck and Jim first meet on Jackson Island, Huck disregards Jim’s former position as a slave. He sees himself and Jim on equal footing. They’re both runaways trying to find their freedom. In this circumstance, Huck follows what his heart tells him. However, it is not without first acknowledging the voice of society. “People will call me a low-down Abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum,” he says to Jim before declaring his course of action “…but that don’t make no difference, I ain’t a-going to tell, and I ain’t a-going back there, anyways.” The last phrase of Huck’s statement shows the impact that Huck’s conscience is having on his decision. Huck’s course of action would have been set had he stopped talking after “I ain’t a-going to tell,” but he continues onward to justify his actions saying “I ain’t a-going back there, anyways.” Huck finds the need to validate a decision that he was free to make. Though he makes his own independent decision, this act of validation shows that he is, in reality, not completely free but still being influenced by the opinions of the town.

Later, in the chapter “The Rattlesnake Skin Does Its Work,” Huck’s decision to help Jim is tested. He’s presented with a perfect opportunity to give Jim up, two slave hunters ask to inspect his boat where Jim is hiding. Huck again finds himself torn between what he thinks would be right by society’s standards and what would be right in his own mind. He doesn’t give up Jim but ultimately assesses the situation as a loose-loose scenario. He asks himself “…s’pose you’d a done right and give Jim up, would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, I’d feel bad—I’d feel just the same way I do now.” Huck directly states that he believes that giving Jim up would have been the “right” thing to do. Again, Huck is torn between what his conscious says and what he wants to do in his heart. This particular encounter shows the degree to which Huck was in conflict with himself. He is so equally split that neither side makes him feel better than the other; both feel equally bad. However, despite the apparent equilibrium, Huck again chooses to act with his heart.

The moral climax of the novel comes in the form of a reversal. After the Wilks incident, Huck’s “conscience [gets] to grinding” him and he realizes that he’s “stolen” from Miss Watson. He feels like he has committed a crime against a kind old lady, and a friend of his, and he aims to correct it. After Huck writes Miss Watson a letter explaining the situation, it seems like Huck’s conscience has finally beat over his heart. However, this is not the case, and in a dramatic reversal Huck cannot find a reason to crush Jim’s dreams of freedom and he declares “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” and he tears up the note. In one motion Huck rejects both the societal belief in slaves as property as well as the religious belief in the need for salvation and paradise. He acknowledges a belief in hell but decides that he’s rather make his own personal decisions than listen to a conscience that has been molded by the public.

Huck was never a proper member of society and never will be. This is why he sets out West at the end of the novel instead of returning to the South. He and Paw have never completely belonged in town. They’re outsiders. The difference between the two of them is that Paw wants to be on the inside, and Huck never can seem to find that desire. He is independent. He knows that the only thing he can completely trust is himself. As an outsider, he’s bound to come in conflict with his own beliefs and what people on the inside of society have told him to believe, but Huck will follow his heart over his conscience every single time, because that is what he knows he can trust. This is what leads Huck and Jim down the river together.

Union in Whitman's "Beat! Beat! Drum!"

In comparing the war poems of contemporary poets Walt Whitman, George Moses Horton, and Henry Timrod there is a clear line separating Whitman from the other two poets. War covered America with an unavoidable aura in the 1860’s yet these poets saw its effects in two distinctly different ways. Whitman saw one country torn apart by a vague yet violent force. Timrod and Horton saw two countries, joined in overt bloody combat.
Throughout his poem “Beat! Beat! Drum!” Whitman maintains a unified view of the country. He sees war as a force within a solid America. It is not something that has split the country into the USA and the CSA but a state that is pervasive within one country. This attitude separates Whitman, a self proclaimed "American," from Timrod, sometimes called the "poet laurite of the confederacy." Timrod and Whitman's poems "Cotton Boll" and "Beat! Beat! Drum!" are formatted very similarly but differ in way that the two poets see their country. Both poems take the readers on a tour of war torn America. Through a spiritual experience with a piece of cotton, the narrator of "Cotton Boll" is able to see "the landscape" broaden before his eyes as if a "veil" was "lifted." Likewise, in "Beat! Beat! Drums!" Whitman follows the drums and bugle on a tour which covers the entirety of the country. The difference between these two poems is in the distinctively different ways that each poet sees their country. In his poem "Cotton Boll," Timrod focuses on the unique aspects of the CSA, emphasizing the exclusive qualities of the southern states and romanticizing the idea of the new fledgling country. Whitman's perspective is much broader. While Timrod prays for victory over the North using phrases like "Upon the Northern winds, the voice of woe" and "Northward, strike with us!" Whitman's war has no definitive direction or boundaries. Whitman sees war as universal destruction in ambiguous "cities." He makes no distinction between North and South.
The way Whitman describes the path of war is intentionally ambiguous. The examples cited throughout could be at any location; they illicit emotional reactions regardless of whether or not they are located in the North or the South. The first concrete location that Whitman describes being disrupted by war is the church. The church is a powerful symbol in America. Often in colonial times the church was one of the first buildings established within a town. Many communities are laid out with the church at the center, as the focus of community life. Furthermore, the church is a symbol that knows no political bounds. The image of a church disrupted has just as much striking power to readers of Whitman in the USA as well as in the CSA. Throughout "Beat! Beat! Drum!" Whitman continues to show the reader universal examples of the disruption of war as the sound of the drums filters "into the school," across a farm, and into the presence of a man with his wife. The poem climaxes when the drums of war disturb the two most universal images of all: that of a mother and child and that of someone lying, dead. Everyone has a mother and everyone dies. By introducing these universal characters and then neglecting them, Whitman is showing that everyone within the country is neglected and hurt by war. Unlike Timrod, Whitman does not take a side in the Civil War. He uses vague language because the distinction between North and South does not exist to the destruction of war. War unites everyone in desolation and chaos.
Another way that Whitman is able to unite all people in "Beat! Beat! Drums!" is through his depiction of the war itself. There is no clear enemy. In fact, throughout the entire poem, the word "war" does not appear once. Despite this hole, the idea of war is clear because conflict is pervasive. Whitman creates conflict by setting up an event to occur and then refusing the fulfillment of that event. He uses this technique especially in the second stanza. Whitman depicts "beds prepared for sleepers," and then destroys this opportunity saying that "no sleepers shall sleep in those beds." Though the conflict is clear, the instigator of the conflict is not. He uses ethereal language and images to describe the idea of war rather than describing specific battles. Timrod and Horton both uses specific, vivid descriptions of violent battles. In “The Spectator of the Battle of Belmont,” Horton first narrows the area for interpretation by titling the poem in reference to a specific battle. He continues by using bloody, archetypal images to describe the battle as having the "war-beaming aspect, the sword and the shield." War as presented by Horton fits into a clear and defined role. In Timrod’s “Cotton Boll” the battle lines are clear and unambiguous with the North engaged against the South. Timrod asks god to help “us…roll the crimson flood” of war.” Not only does Timrod define the combatants but he takes a side in the war. Whitman’s War moves everywhere. It is seen as a “ruthless force” not as group of people engaged against one another. To Whitman, War is not a tangible force. It doesn’t march around like a soldier but floats like smoke “through the windows” and “through doors.” The refrain of “Beat! Beat! Drum!” conjures up constant auditory stimulation which is again, not unique to the North or South but a uniting sense. The drums and bugles could belong to either side and regardless of who the instruments belong to, they are still “terrible drums.” Also defining War as a factor which is not controlled by either side, Whitman shows it literally on another literal level than the rest of life as it moves “over the traffic of cities – over the…streets.” To Whitman, War is not created by two separate human armies. It is a loftier amorphous force. The North and the South are unified pawns; manipulate by the beat of the war drums.
George Horton and Henry Timrod view the American Civil War as a division between two peoples on opposing sides. Whitman sees one people united in combat against a nebulous “ruthless force” which threatens everyone from mothers to children with destruction.