The Goophered Grapevine

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 2008

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Literary Devices

Dialect

Dialect is an effort to represent the specific characteristics of a nonstandard spoken variant of a language in written form. Writers may represent nonstandard English by spelling certain words phonetically, including words that only appear in the dialect, the addition or elision of letters, or through the use of punctuation like apostrophes. Words in dialect may or may not be arranged in sentences with a standard structure.

In “The Goophered Grapevine,” Julius McAdoo’s speech is always represented in dialect and serves as a part of his characterization as a Southerner and a formerly enslaved person.

For example, Chesnutt represents Julius McAdoo’s first line of dialogue like this: “Yas, suh. I lives des ober yander, behine de nex san'-hill, on do Lumberton Plank-road” (par. 8, line 1).In this line, Chesnutt uses coined spellings (e.g. “suh” for “sir” and “ober” for “over”) to represent the sound of Julius’s deep Southern accent and an atypically-conjugated verb (e.g. “I lives” instead of “I live”) to represent Julius’s use of African American Vernacular English, a variant of English spoken by some African Americans. Nevertheless, the sentence structure is fairly standard American English.

Dialect like this was frequently used in regional literature as local color, as representation of cultural and linguistic traits specific to a region, and to make the story more realistic or entertaining for readers who might have been unfamiliar with the region. In contemporary culture, this dialect is typically associated with racist stereotypes, so it is generally avoided.

Signifying

Within African American culture, signifying (or “signifyin’”)is a form of ritualized, indirect insult. Within African American culture, signifying may well have grown out of the context of enslavement, in which it could be potentially lethal to engage in direct conflict with other enslaved people or a person who exercised authority over them.

Julius uses signifying throughout the story to critique the bad behavior of whites or to express his disapproval of whites. When Julius tells the story of the Yankee who claimed to have a more profitable method for growing and processing grapes—with the predictable outcome of the grapes being destroyed—he is signifying on his primary listener, the narrator of “The Goophered Grapevine,” who is also planning on applying new methods to make the vineyard profitable. The indirect and unstated comparison between the narrator and the Yankee is Julius’s way of criticizing outsiders with little knowledge of the local area coming in with grand plans. The indirection in this case reflects his understanding that the narrator has the power to take both his home and livelihood away from him.

Other examples of signifying include Julius’s descriptions of Dugal McAdoo, the former plantation owner. Here is one string of insults:

Now, ef you'd a knowel ole Mars Dugal' McAdoo, you'd a knowed dat it ha' ter be a mighty rainy day when de could n' line sump'n for his nigger ter do, en it ha' er be a mighty little hole he could n' crawl thoo, en ha' ter be a monst'us cloudy night w'en a dollar git by him in de dahkness (par. 35, line 1).

In modern, more standardized English, the quote reads:

Now, if you had known Master Dugal McAdoo, you’d know that it would have to be a very rainy day when he couldn’t line up something for his [slaves] to do, and it would have to be a very small hole he couldn’t crawl through, and it would have to be the cloudiest night when a dollar could get by him in the dark.

While Julius does not directly state it, the implication of the quote is that the enslaver is a devil, extracting the maximum work out of tired enslaved people, snake-like, and most active in the dark. Julius’s use of signifying instead of a more direct statement of his disapproval of McAdoo’s behavior shows the hold that the deference learned during enslavement has even after it ends.

Interpolated Narrative

An interpolated narrative is a story that occurs within a story and is also called a frame narrative. This way of structuring narrative frequently appears within literature that has been influenced by oral culture. It calls attention to the act of storytelling and offers the reader contextual information—the appearance and sound of the storyteller, for example—that would be obvious to listeners in the physical presence of a storyteller.

Interpolated narratives can sometimes offer commentary on either the surrounding narrative by reinforcing themes or giving background on an important character in the narrative. Interpolated narratives can also serve to illustrate an important point the narrator in the framing narrative wishes to make.

In “The Goophered Grapevine,” Chesnutt uses the interpolated narrative to provide cultural and historical information about the plantation the narrator is purchasing, to entertain the reader, and to offer commentary on the excesses that led to the destruction of the South.