The Confessions of Nat Turner - Literary Significance & Criticism

Literary Significance & Criticism

Despite defenses by notable African-American authors Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin, the novel was strongly criticised by some black Americans for its treatment of Turner as a brooding and sexually disturbed figure. Others did not like a white author writing about a black historical figure. Ten black authors wrote essays criticizing the work, collected in William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond (1968). Historian Eugene D. Genovese defended Styron's right to imagine Turner as a fictional character.

Turner and one of his supporters are shown fantasizing about sexually assaulting white women. Critics took issue with Styron using the "myth of the black rapist", as portraying black men as prone to sexual violence against white women. Suspected sexual assault was a longstanding racist stereotype used as rhetorical justification for lynching black men.

Some critics argued that the book explored male sexuality and its manifestations, its development, and how it could often weave with notions of vulnerability, rage, love and power. The protagonist witnesses two acts of rape with pain and disdain. First, as a child, he sees a white overseer raping his mother while their owner, who would not have allowed it, was away. Second, at the start of the revolt, a deranged black man in an act of rage raped and killed a white woman. The protagonist had expressly ordered his followers not to rape women during the rebellion.

Despite protests against the novel, Styron's work won critical acclaim and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1968. Perhaps its greatest accomplishment is its portrayal of the ways in which slavery corrupted and twisted ideals such as Christianity and innocence.

Time Magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.

Bill Clinton has cited the novel as one of his favorite books.