StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

The Fires of Jubilee - Book Report/Review Example

Cite this document
Summary
The Fires of Jubilee is a straight forward account by Nat Turner. The book revolves around Nat Turner and his surroundings. It is set in the backdrop of Virginia backwater where it took place. Oates through most of this book depicts Turner’s life as a brilliant child…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER92.2% of users find it useful
The Fires of Jubilee
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "The Fires of Jubilee"

The Fires of Jubilee: Book report The Fires of Jubilee is a straight forward account by Nat Turner. The book revolves around Nat Turner and his surroundings. It is set in the backdrop of Virginia backwater where it took place. Oates through most of this book depicts Turner’s life as a brilliant child. Turner was brilliant and spectacular as a child. He hoped and expected to be free but his hopes were shattered after he was sold. The book is largely about the gory rampage and the suppressive ways of those days.

Oates treads on a very careful path in his book. He does not indulge in psychological speculations or take an explicit stand with William Styron or his critics. The rebellion took place in 1831 in rural Virginia. The book is more of a historical account and narrates the events that led to the bloodiest rebellion of all times in Southern History. Oates has projected a very dark encounter of the rebellion. He has made use of the statements and claims which can’t be proven or confirmed. His stance as a neutral bystander or a sympathetic historian comes across as vague and bleak at various points in the novel.

One can’t really tell what he is trying to imply or what he is up to at certain assertions that he has made in the book. This said, the book is a good read and is a very endearing and engaging historical account. It keeps the reader hooked till the last moment. The only problem with the book is the authenticity of its various claims. It can give people of today’s era a tainted picture of the historical perspective of one of the bloodiest eras of American history. Oates depiction of Turner and his association with Margaret Whitehead gives a brief insight into the women of that era.

Margaret Whitehead was the white woman Turner murdered. The epilogue is a bit embarrassing and is about Oates and his weird experiences in the Southampton County when he visited there with his wife. Overall, the book depicts Turner as someone brilliant but a deranged religious visionary. He pioneered the slave revolt. Had it not been for him, the slave revolt would have never succeeded and neither would they have gained any freedom without launching such an explicit assault. The novel is a very fascinating account of the slave rebellion led by Nat Turner in Virginia.

While the author has attempted an objective depiction, he is unable to stop himself from giving some prejudices that he felt in that era. While Oates is honest, he keeps his limits intact. The rebellion lasted 48 hours. As an aftereffect of the revolt, around 48 black men and women were executed and charged of conspiracy and treason. The women of Southampton County also lived the lives of slaves. They were subjected to the same trauma as the men. In the end of the rebellion: “"In total, the state executed 55 people, banished many more, and acquitted a few.

The state reimbursed the slaveholders for their slaves. But in the hysterical climate that followed the rebellion, close to 200 black people were killed by white militias and mobs.” Turner evaded capture for many months. On the 30th of October, Benjamin Philips found him in a hole and Turner was evicted. Following this, a trial was arranged and on Nov 5, 1831 Nat Turner was sentenced to death. Sequels to this book followed after Turner’s capture and another book was published called “The Confessions of Nat Turner”.

The book was a byproduct of Gray’s research when Turner was hiding. The book is a window into Turner’s mind. The book may not be extraordinary but it is widely regarded as one of the darkest books of its era. Its depiction of the slave rebellion is stunning and is endearing to the reader. Works Cited Herbert Aptheker. American Negro Slave Revolts. 5th edition. New York: International Publishers, 1983 (1943). Print ---. Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion. New York: Humanities Press, 1966. Print Junius P.

Rodriguez, ed. Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2006. Print Kenneth S. Greenberg, ed. Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Print Scot French. The Rebellious Slave: Nat Turner in American Memory. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 2004. Print Thomas R. Gray, The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Leader of the Late Insurrections in Southampton, Va. Baltimore: Lucas & Deaver, 1831. Print Walter L. Gordon III. The Nat Turner Insurrection Trials: A Mystic Chord Resonates Today (Booksurge, 2009). Print

Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“The Fires of Jubilee Book Report/Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words”, n.d.)
Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/history/1445292-the-fires-of-jubilee
(The Fires of Jubilee Book Report/Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 Words)
https://studentshare.org/history/1445292-the-fires-of-jubilee.
“The Fires of Jubilee Book Report/Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 Words”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/history/1445292-the-fires-of-jubilee.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF The Fires of Jubilee

Civil War in The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turners Fierce Rebellion by Oates

The book review "Civil War in The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion by Oates" states that the author Stephen B.... Oates writes about the fierce and bloody slave revolt which took place in 1831, against their white masters by the slaves of Southampton in this essay....
1 Pages (250 words) Book Report/Review

The Violent Road to the Civil War: The Fires of Jubilee by Stephen Oates

The present text provides a brief analysis of the book about slavery and how it led to the Civil War entitled "The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion" written by Stephen B.... Oates.... The review critically discusses the main character and his actions depicted in the plot....
1 Pages (250 words) Book Report/Review

Fires of Jubilee(History)

Nat Turner was born on October 18th, 1800 in Southampton, Virginia, to Nancy who was brought to America in 1795 and later purchased by a wealthy tide water planter, Benjamin Turner.... His mother, Nancy attempted to kill him, when he was a child as she opposed the idea of bringing… But Nat was a very special child....
4 Pages (1000 words) Essay

The General and Specific Social Conditions That Existed for Nat Turner

The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turners fierce rebellion.... Nat Turner was an African American slave that had the belief that he had been ordained by God to save his people from freedom and this was the reason that he led a black slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia in the 1830s (Oates 56)....
2 Pages (500 words) Essay

The fire of Jubilee by Stephen Oates

In this essay, the author demonstrates The fire of jubilee which is an amazing narrative of the events that happened in 1831 in Virginia.... Also, The author summarizes the book with a postscript from his visit to Virginia where the revolt occurred in order to study and know much about Turner....
4 Pages (1000 words) Essay

Consideration and Promissory Estoppels

jubilee Media television has custom-made television series named “The Secret Lives of Academics” that will feature a prominent Chemistry University lecturer who runs a drug production lab and another law lecturer at a London University and who works as a secret spy for M15.... hellip; he jubilee Media has entered into advertising an agreement with various sponsors who will be advertising during the commercial breaks of the television show.... The jubilee Media has contracted Bobby Bodgit Ltd (BB), a construction company to build a studio for filming and Voice Over facilities to safeguard the identity of the lecturers....
8 Pages (2000 words) Coursework

The Fires of Jubilee - Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion

This paper "The Fires of Jubilee - Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion" focuses on a happy note where children, black and white alike played in abandon on the plantation fields without the slightest notion of how the adults would tear them apart when they grew to be adults themselves.... The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion' is a tragic and heart-rending tale of a slave named Nathaniel, who was convicted and hanged for the fierce rebellion that he had started....
8 Pages (2000 words) Book Report/Review

Analysis of Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turners Fierce Rebellion by Stephen B. Oates

The book, “The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion” within its limited and terse documentation captivated within 208 pages, bears the testimony of a very interesting and episodic event in the history of America.... The author focuses on “fires of jubilee: Nat Turner's Rebellion” which explores the background of an upsurge which culminated into such a horrifying event along with the explanation of the facts that drive not only the scholars but the readers as well from the complacency of America's slave history… History cannot be treated just as a cluster of specific events that took place in the yesteryears that are to be forgotten as lost events in the dark abbeys of the by-gone days....
6 Pages (1500 words) Book Report/Review
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us