The Confessions of Nat Turner

by William Styron

Voltaire, who said that the beginning of wisdom is the moment when one understands how little concerned with one’s own life are other men, they who are so desperately preoccupied with their own.

Ah, what bitter tears God must weep at the sight of the things that men do to other men!”

ever saw of him. I stood in the lane until the final echo of the wheels vanished rattling in the distance. My desolation was complete. As sundered from my root and branch as a falling leaf fluttering on eddies of air, I was adrift between that which was past and those things yet to come. Great boiling clouds hung on the far horizon.

Only a dripping of water through the cracked millpond dam disturbed the silence now—only a steady unhurried dripping and nearby the flickering hum of grasshoppers in the weeds. I tried to force back the sharp and growing excitement but even as I did so I felt my pulse pounding and the sweat flowing beneath my arms in streams.

his dry ageless cricket’s voice was filled with despair and hatred and love and misery and retribution as he said: “You better mind me! You jest better mind me, that’s all, you hear!”

Virginia. For here in this worn-out country with its decrepit little farms there was still an ebb and flow of human sympathy—no matter how strained and imperfect—between slave and master,

realize with an intensity I had never known before that, chattel or unchained, slave or free, people whose skins were black would never find true liberty—never, never so long as men like Moore dwelt on God’s earth.

It had become plain to me that white men reared outside the tradition of slavery often made the most callous taskmasters—

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

did they too know this demoralizing terror, this tremor in the bones, this whiff of imminent, hovering death? Did they too taste the mouth go dry at thought of the coming slaughter, sense a shiver of despair fly through their restless flesh as they conjured up images of bloodied heads and limbs,

I arose as if to flee headlong through the pines, to find some refuge in the distant woods where I would be hid forever beyond the affairs of God and men.

but at last how brave he was!

“Kill him!” I heard Sam roar behind me. But I was not ready.

I listened to the scrape and rustle of fallen leaves as the cold air swept them across the ground.

Is it maybe because I have no remorse that I can’t pray and that I know myself to be so removed from the sight of God?

and the volleys swelled tempestuously down upon us with a noise like the continual crackle of lightning, ripping twigs and leaves from the green summer trees.

I wake abruptly to see that morning approaches with the faintest tinge of pale frosty light, stealing through the barred window and touching the cedar walls with a glow barely visible, like ashes strewn upon a dying fire.

The edge of dawn pales, brightens; stars wink away like dying sparks as the night fades and dusty sunrise begins to streak the far sky. Yet steadfast the morning star rides in the heavens radiant and pure, set like crystal amid the still waters of eternity.