The Goophered Grapevine

The narrator, a native of Ohio, has some of the same aims as the Yankee, including profit-taking, but he represents a more positive symbol of what Northerners with more tolerant attitudes toward African Americans could achieve. As the narrator of the frame tale, he is portrayed as a rational and ethical person who thinks through the consequences of his actions, unlike Dugal McAdoo. His willingness to pay Julius McAdoo generous wages and his ability to transform the ruined plantation into a thriving business demonstrate the importance of fairness and hard work.

The owner of the plantation and Julius, Dugal McAdoo is a cruel man who is motivated by a desire for profit. He is known for working enslaved people with no respite and is so gullible that he allows the Yankee to destroy his already thriving vineyard and take his money through gambling. He is also a dishonest person, as represented by the con he runs by selling and re-selling Henry. His greed and cruelty exemplify the worse traits of antebellum Southern culture.

Henry becomes the unwitting victim of the goopher when he eats from one of McAdoo’s vines. Over the course of the story, he alternates between being an aging, balding man troubled by rheumatism and a man with glossy hair, energy, and enough strength to be a field hand who is attractive to buyers. He is sold over and over again during the spring by his owner, who takes advantage of the goopher to make enough money to buy another plantation. Henry is moved around by forces that are external to him, especially his enslaver, and thus represents the power of white enslavers over enslaved people.

The Yankee is a Northern stranger who ruins the vineyard before the Civil War. The Yankee is represented as a person who promises greater harvests through the use of scientific methods. The destruction of the vines by these methods and the Yankee’s greed, exemplified by his taking advantage of the hospitality of the houses and his fleecing of Dugal McAdoo, as the two gamble, make him a typical carpetbagger, the derisive name given to Northerners who used the resources of the South to their own benefit. 

Aunt Peggy is the local conjure woman. Her ability to conjure makes her a powerful figure and she is feared by African Americans. Her power in her community is underscored both by the consequences of violating the goophered grapevines and the willingness of Dugal to appeal to her to protect his vines in the first place.