The Confessions of Nat Turner

The story that inspired the major motion picture The Birth of a Nation (2016) In the late summer of 1831, in a remote section of southeastern Virginia, there took place the only effective, sustained revolt in the annals of American Negro slavery... The revolt was led by a remarkable Negro preacher named Nat Turner, an educated slave who felt himself divinely ordained to annihilate all the white people in the region. The Confessions of Nat Turner is narrated by Nat himself as he lingers in jail through the cold autumnal days before his execution. The compelling story ranges over the whole of Nat's Life, reaching its inevitable and shattering climax that bloody day in August. The Confessions of Nat Turner is not only a masterpiece of storytelling; is also reveals in unforgettable human terms the agonizing essence of Negro slavery. Through the mind of a slave, Willie Styron has re-created a catastrophic event, and dramatized the intermingled miseries, frustrations--and hopes--which caused this extraordinary black man to rise up out of the early mists of our history and strike down those who held his people in bondage.

The story that inspired the major motion picture The Birth of a Nation (2016) In the late summer of 1831, in a remote section of southeastern Virginia, there took place the only effective, sustained revolt in the annals of American Negro slavery... The revolt was led by a remarkable Negro preacher named Nat Turner, an educated slave who felt himself divinely ordained to annihilate all the white people in the region. The Confessions of Nat Turner is narrated by Nat himself as he lingers in jail through the cold autumnal days before his execution. The compelling story ranges over the whole of Nat's Life, reaching its inevitable and shattering climax that bloody day in August. The Confessions of Nat Turner is not only a masterpiece of storytelling; is also reveals in unforgettable human terms the agonizing essence of Negro slavery. Through the mind of a slave, Willie Styron has re-created a catastrophic event, and dramatized the intermingled miseries, frustrations--and hopes--which caused this extraordinary black man to rise up out of the early mists of our history and strike down those who held his people in bondage.

The Confessions of Nat Turner provides insight into the mind of one of the greatest freedom fighters in human history. In the late night of August 21, 1831 Nat Turner and other revolutionaries began their divinely inspired rebellion. They went from plantation to plantation killing whites indiscriminately. Nat's detailed review of his life and the uprising can be read in the pages of this text. "Being at play with other children, when three or four years old, I was telling them something, which my mother overhearing, said it had happened before I was born-I stuck to my story, however, and related somethings which went, in her opinion, to confirm it..." Nat Turner "Armed with a hatchet, and accompanied by Will, I entered my master's chamber, it being dark, I could not give a death blow, the hatchet glanced from his head, he sprang from the bed and called his wife, it was his last word..." Nat Turner

The Confessions of Nat Turner provides insight into the mind of one of the greatest freedom fighters in human history. In the late night of August 21, 1831 Nat Turner and other revolutionaries began their divinely inspired rebellion. They went from plantation to plantation killing whites indiscriminately. Nat's detailed review of his life and the uprising can be read in the pages of this text. "Being at play with other children, when three or four years old, I was telling them something, which my mother overhearing, said it had happened before I was born-I stuck to my story, however, and related somethings which went, in her opinion, to confirm it..." Nat Turner "Armed with a hatchet, and accompanied by Will, I entered my master's chamber, it being dark, I could not give a death blow, the hatchet glanced from his head, he sprang from the bed and called his wife, it was his last word..." Nat Turner