The Fires Of Starlee Nat Turner Analysis

The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner’s Fierce Rebellion

Stephen B. Oates is an acclaimed biographer famous for his biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Lincoln. Oates was a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts- Amherst. Oats was also an expert of The United States history during the nineteenth-century era. In addition to his career as a professor Oates was an author to sixteen books that all followed the same theme as being biographies of American historical figures during the nineteenth century. The New York Times described Stephen B. Oates work in the enticing novel The Fires of Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner’s Fierce Rebellion as “A penetrating reconstruction of the most disturbing and crucial slave uprising in

The author does an excellent job in describing the scenes for the reader. The level of detail that the author uses places the reader into the scene that he is describing. As the reader reads through the pages of this novel the reader feels as though they are present in Southampton County. The author states, “He was like a powerful angel whose wings were nailed to the flood” (Oates 41). It is as if the reader is with Nat Turner working under the hot sun and feeling the same amount of frustration he is. The author also does an amazing job by giving factual information. In addition to describing the emotions that Turner felt he also gave a vivid description of the events that were taking place during his time period. He gave an insight into what America was going through to lead to the rebellion. The author makes Nat Turner’s rebellion understandable and clear by illustrating the effects that it had on America. He writes how the rebellion hurts the slaves at first because there were harsher punishments, but he then goes on to discuss the legacy that was left. At the end of the book, Oates puts in a sections called “Reference Notes“ that lists all the research that Oates did to write the book. Oates does an excellent job in conveying to the reader the true historical facts that took place during the rebellion of

The book was broken up into two major sections where the author explores every part of Nat Turner’s mindset at the time. He has a prologue which he uses to set up the setting of Nat Turner’s time period. In addition to the prologue, Oates has an epilogue which he uses to describe the effects of Nat’s Turners rebellion. These two major sections really help the reader to understand what Nat Turner’s purpose was. After the prologue, Oates has four sections which he dedicates to describing Turner’s mindset to lead up into the rebellion as well as the legacy that it left with the other slaves. In the first section called This Infernal Spirit of Slavery, Oates states “For Nat it was an especially painful time, for he had been led to believe he might be freed one day” (Oates 21). When Nat was put into the field as a normal field slave Turner has a period of pure confusion. Just a year ago he was playing with the white children and now he was treated as a piece of property and worked like a mule. As he started to get more religious Turner felt that he was put on this earth to end slavery. Oates points out that Turner believed that “God did not intend a man of his gifts, his intelligence, his powers, to waste his years hoeing weeds and slopping hogs” (Oates 32). Turner had visions which he interpreted as messages from God to do his work. His