Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

wilderness of beauty.

A thousand twining vines, with flowers of untold name, perhaps unknown as yet to the botanist, help to fill up the mosaic.

the establishment of the swamp being the unknown. since stowe seperates it from her established canon of reality, mythicality can reign

The only egress from it is a winding path cut through with a hatchet, which can be entered by only one person at a time;

violence is the price you pay to enter the swamp. question if this is meant to signify an embrace of black rage or the tacit violence of white planation owner living

he is going!"

who has died?

and an immortal soul has gone back to Him who gave it.

In the spirit of this permission, a party of negro-hunters, with dogs and guns, had chased this man, who, on this day, had unfortunately ventured out of his concealment.

surprising implication that dogs (beasts?) exist outside of nature. or that nature itself is multifacteted and sometimes the enemy

Are they restrained?"

Dred as old world hebraic prophet

"I believe," said Clayton, "intolerance is a rooted vice in our nature. The world is as full of different minds and bodies as the woods are of leaves, and each one has its own habit of growth. And yet our first impulse is to forbid everything that would not be proper for us.

THESIS

I spects de Lord would have fur to open it—would so. But, arter all, when de preaching is done, dere don't 'pear to be nothing to it. Dere an't no gate, dere an't no do', nor no way; and dere an't no fighting, 'cept when Ben Dakin and Jim Stokes get jawing about der dogs; and everybody comes back eating der dinner quite comf'table, and 'pears like dere wan't no such ting dey's been preaching 'bout. Dat ar troubles me—does so—'cause I wants fur to get dese yer chil'en in de kingdom, some way or oder. I didn't know

a favorite trope of mine: the "dumbest" character is really the smartest. old tiff is right. religious posturing isnt action. people say things one way but act another. religion can be deceptive

but some of de quality would know more 'bout it."

Every once in a while you see in a wood a jessamine, or a sweet-brier, or a grape-vine, that throws itself into a gracefulness of growth which a landscape gardener would go down on his knees for, but cannot get.

every now and again nature creates a beauty which man cannot. we are denied it.

Nature resolutely denies it to him. She says, 'No! I keep this for my own. You won't have my wildness—my freedom; very well, then you shall not have the graces that spring from it.' Just so it is with men. Unite any assembly of common men in a great enthusiasm,—work them up into an abandon, and let every one 'let go,' and speak as nature prompts,—and you will have brush, underwood, briers, and all grotesque growths; but, now and then, some thought or sentiment will be struck out with a freedom or power such as you cannot get in any other way.

dred. sometimes nature creates a person which is like nature itslef. an inperfect image of a perfact world

The voice of the people is the voice of God.' There is truth in it. I never repent my share in a popular excitement, provided it be of the higher sentiments; and I do not ask too strictly whether it has produced any tangible result.

clayton the populist

"You strong electioners think you's among the elect!" said one of the by-standers. "You wouldn't be so crank about it, if you didn't! Now, see here: if everything is decreed, how am I going to help myself?"

Well," said father Bonnie, "I'll think of it!"

the economizing of the black body by the spiritual leader

"Yes!" she said, "very! And I'm glad of it! I'm going to die!—I'm glad of that, too! That's all I've got left to be glad of!

:-(

write to my mother. She is a free woman; she lives in New York. I want you to give my love to her, and tell her not to worry any more. Tell her I tried all I could to get to her: but they took us, and mistress was so angry she sold me! I forgive her, too. I don't bear her any malice, 'cause it's all over, now! She used to say I was a wild girl, and laughed too loud. I shan't trouble any one that way any more! So that's no matter!"

:,-( !!!!

"I don't want to feel better! I want to die!" she said, throwing herself over. "What should I want to live for?" What should she? The words struck father Dickson so much that he sat for a while in silence. He meditated in his mind how he could reach, with any words, that dying ear, or enter with her into that land of trance and mist, into whose cloudy circle the soul seemed already to have passed.

Can a mother's tender care Cease toward the child she bare? Yes, she may forgetful be: Still will I remember thee."

what shall it profit a man if he

should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

clayton said this earlier i believe

Don't speak to me any more about that! I won't betray you, but I won't consent to have blood shed. My mistress is my sister."

where harry's allegiences lie will be fun 2 follow

Now, hurry! come to me, or he will take thy wife for a prey!"

is Dred clairvoyent? precient?

CHAPTER XXIV. LIFE IN THE SWAMPS.

End of volume 1

In regard to his physical system there was also much that was peculiar. Our readers may imagine a human body of the largest and keenest vitality to grow up so completely under the nursing influences of nature, that it may

seem to be as perfectly en rapport with them as a tree; so that the rain, the wind, and the thunder, all those forces from which human beings generally seek shelter, seem to hold with it a kind of fellowship, and to be familiar companions of existence.

Such was the case with Dred. So completely had he come into sympathy and communion with nature, and with those forms of it which more particularly surrounded him in the swamps, that he moved about among them with as much ease as a lady treads her Turkey carpet. What would seem to us in recital to be incredible hardship, was to him but an ordinary condition of existence. To walk knee-deep in the spongy soil of the swamp, to force his way through thickets, to lie all night sinking in the porous soil, or to crouch, like the alligator, among reeds and rushes, were to him situations of as much comfort as well-curtained beds and pillows are to us.

Dred is Swamp Thing

That mysterious and singular gift, whatever it may be, which Highland seers denominate second sight, is a very common tradition among the negroes; and

there are not wanting thousands of reputed instances among them to confirm belief in it. What this faculty may be, we shall not pretend to say. Whether there be in the soul a yet undeveloped attribute, which is to be to the future what memory is to the past, or whether in some individuals an extremely high and perfect condition of the sensuous organization endows them with something of that certainty of instinctive discrimination which belongs to animals, are things which we shall not venture to decide upon.

yet he performed it with as little consciousness of fatigue as if he had been a spirit.

The aristocratic nature of society at the south so completely segregates people of a certain position in life from any acquaintance with the movements of human nature in circles below them, that the most fearful things may be transacting in their vicinity unknown or unnoticed.

A real book always makes you feel that there is more in the writer than anything that he has said."

but, den, you see, honey, dere's some folks dere's two men in 'em,—one is a good one and t'oder is very bad. Well,

abstract goodness doesn't suit our present mortal condition.

But Clayton will do it better yet, because he is actually sincere in it. And, after all's said and done, there's a good deal in that. When a fellow speaks in solemn earnest, he gives a kind of weight that you can't easily get at any other way."

I thought cases were always decided according to law! What else do they make laws for?"

"I don't pretend to justify it. But Edward has great power of exciting the feelings, and under the influence of his eloquence the case may go the other way, and humanity triumph at the expense of law."

You must take that into account. It was a taste of a new kind of pleasure, made attractive by its novelty."

There's nothing like confidence. If a person trusts me, I'm bound."

"The field-hands were more difficult to manage, on some accounts,"

I forgot, because of how centrally the story revolves around Harry or Tomtitt, that there are field laborors. While they may not be whipped and beated theyre still abused

You see the poor creatures have been so barbarized by the way they have been treated in past times, that it has made them hard and harsh.

The plantation barely pays for itself, because Edward makes that quite a secondary consideration. The

"Oh, I see, Miss Anne, you are for pursuing your advantage. I see triumph in your eyes. But yet," he added, "after all this display, the capability of your children makes me feel sad. To what end is it? What purpose will it serve, except to unfit them for their inevitable condition—to make them discontented and unhappy?"

"There are some minds," said Clayton, "large enough to take in everything.

I's got some nice berries dat I picked in de swamp,

spects dat ar star is one of de very oldest families up dar."

When I look back at what I was in New York, three months ago, actually I hardly know myself. It seems to me in those old days that life was only a frolic to me, as it is to the kitten. I don't really think that there was much harm in me, only the want of good. In those days, sometimes I used to have a sort of dim longing to be better, particularly when Livy Ray was at school. It seemed as if she woke up something that had been asleep in me; but she went away, and I fell asleep again, and life went on like a dream. Then I became acquainted with you, and you began to rouse me again, and for some time I thought I didn't like to wake; it was just as it is when one lies asleep in the morning—it's so pleasant to sleep and dream, that one resists any one who tries to bring them back to life. I used to feel quite pettish when I first knew you, and sometimes wished you'd let me alone, because I saw that you belonged to a different kind of sphere from what I'd been living in. And I had a presentiment that, if I let you go on, life would have to be something more than a joke with me. But you would, like a very indiscreet man as you are, you would insist on being in sober earnest.

"I used to think that I had no heart; I begin to think I have a good deal now.

but the thought of you mingles with every thought."

"You say you may to-day be called to do something which you think right, but which will lose you many friends; which will destroy your popularity, which may alter all your prospects in life; and you ask if I can love you yet. I say, in answer, that it was not your friends that I loved, nor your popularity, nor your prospects, but you. I can love and honor a man who is not afraid nor ashamed to do what he thinks to be right; and therefore I hope ever to remain yours,

:,-)