Perversion the Social Relation

174 Michael P. Biblerwants only the destruction of culture for his own self-gratification. IfNat wanted nothing more than personal revenge on the whites he blamesfor his real dehumanization and pain as a slave, then there would be nosign that he has any sense of the community he would build after his revolt.And yet, this is not the case. At a key moment when Nat watchestwo slaves whose masters have forced them to fight each other in publicuntil they are bloody and exhausted, he becomes outraged and lecturesthe other slaves in the audience with the only sermon he makes in theentire novel. Preaching about the Jews' deliverance from their bondagein Egypt, he tells his "brothers" to learn to take pride in their blackness:Them Jews become men. But oh, my brothers, black folk ain't nevergoin' to be led from bondage without they has pridel Black folkain't goin' to be free, they ain't goin' to have no spoonbread andsweet cider less'n they studies to love they own selves. Only thenwill the firstbe the last, and the last first. Black folk ain't never goin'to be no great nation until they studies to love they own black skinan' the beauty of that skin an' the beauty of them black hands thattoils so hard and black feet that trods so weary on God's earth. (311)In this passage and throughout the rest of the sermon, Nat appealsto his fellow slaves through a rhetoric of kinship in which all menare connected laterally as brothers. Nat replaces slavery's hierarchicalarrangement of paternalistic relations—master/father, slave/child,mammy, uncle, and so on—with the more egalitarian political modelof a fraternal brotherhood. More importantly, he invokes this notionof brotherhood to encourage them to take pride in themselves—to findtheir own sense of identity as proud, beautiful human beings, and notas bodies meant just for work and toil. Then, with a new pride in theirown blackness and a new sense of social equality, this new communityof "brothers" would, in Nat's imagination, ultimately spread to the farcorners of the globe. Clearly imagining a rebellion larger than his personaldesire to punish the white community, Nat decides that it shouldtake place on the Fourth of July and describes his awareness of the effectthis date would have on slaves all over the country:It seemed clear to me that when our eruption was successful. . .and when word of our triumph spread throughout Virginia andthe upper southern seaboard, becoming a signal for Negroes every-