Charles Chesnutt

In both "The Goophered Grapevine" and in "The Sheriff's children", the black character is not seen as inferior neccessarily, but more of an equal person ( well except for the lyncher's in "Sheriff's Children"), and are given respect. The black characters are also given a chance to speak their mind and tell their past lives ( which you see in both stories ) that are actually interesting and help give you information for the story to make sense. I do not know why Uncle Julius did not tell his story on what happened to the plantation but I rather rnjoyed hearing the story about the plantations past by someone who worked there, it's not so boring and despressing as hearing about how the character just looked out onto the fields and watched his servants work. There's no fun in that! You actually got to learn about the other characters in the story, the other workers, and how tey interacted with one another and how they were treated on the plantation. The racial identity of both the blacks in both of these stories is one that you didn't see in "Our Nig". I may be way off but in both of Chesnutt's stories, they were both intelligent n some way. The prisoner in "Sheriff's Children" tricked the sheriff by being stealthy and having very good dialect and the man in "Grapveine" knew of a past that the other two characters did not know about and actually asked him to explain instead of just brushing him off and saying that he don't know what he's talking about. the gothic elements come out in "Goophered Grapevine" with the works of Aunt Peggy and her being classified as a 'witch' by the narrator along with her goopher the grapevines. And then of course there's the element of horror in "Sheriff's Children" when the prisoner has the sheriff held up at gun point. I say this is horror because there is no way for the sheriff to get out therefore there is no resolution. Then, unlike other gothic novels, the heroine ( Polly ) comes to rescue the hero ( her father ) by shooting the prisoner in the arm.

I really don't think that readers cared for the "Sheriff's children" all that much because at some turn of events the black character is in control and has the white man's life in his hands. This is not usual to read and might not have gone over very well with those who believed that blacks were inferior and could never rise up or have the intelligence to retaliate. I rather enjoyed it though :). Along with "Sheriff's Children", in "Grapevine", the worker whos rubs the sap on his head to keep him from dying ( from the goopher Aunt Peggy set one the vines ) seems to take control of Henry, instead of Henry controlling it. The element of gothic in this story is the knowledge of the unknown, we know what happened to the vines, but we don't know exactly if that's the reason why Henry grows younger and older, or if the goopher really worked. there's many more ideas of mine I could talk about, but I think that's enough for now!