The Passing Of Grandison By Charles Chesnutt

“The Passing Of Grandison” is a short story by Charles Chesnutt about Dick Owens’s journey attempting to “run off” one of the enslaved people on his family’s plantation, Grandison. Chesnutt was a mixed race man who critically wrote about social issues; Chesnutt published “The Passing Of Grandison” in 1899. This was in the midst of the Jim Crow Era, which explains why Chesnutt uses this short story as an opportunity to satirize slavery and the stereotypes produced by it. Throughout this story, he incorporates many of these stereotypes and propagandistic ideas in an effort to challenge a larger issue. Charles Chesnutt makes use of these stereotypes to challenge ideas of Black inferiority in his short story “The Passing Of Grandison”. He does

However, Colonel Owens consistently fails to consider that Grandison is a person with a life separate from the one that he has when Owens is present. When suggesting that Grandison go up North with Dick, Colonel Owens says, “…and I reckon we can trust him. He’s too fond of good eating, to risk losing his regular meals” (Chesnutt). This shows Colonel Owens thinks that Grandison cares more about the food he’s given than his freedom. Chesnutt includes comments like these to explain to readers how enslavers perceived the enslaved: ‘give them food and water and work them to shambles and they will be happy’. He is indirectly criticizing this ignorant stereotype by satirizing it. After Grandison states that he is better off than free men, “The colonel was beaming. This was true gratitude…What cold-blooded, heartless monsters they were who would break up this blissful relationship of kindly protection on the one hand, of wise subordination and loyal dependence on the other“ (Chesnutt)! This quote shows how the colonel genuinely couldn’t understand how abolitionists thought that slavery was wrong or why they wanted to free the enslaved. The colonel is a simpleminded and naive stereotypical white enslaver, which helps Chesnutt challenge ideas of Black

When informed readers look at this story through a more critical lens, they can see how extremely ill-informed the colonel and Dick Owens both are about Grandison and his life beyond his presentation to them. Chesnutt used satirical elements to poke fun at the fact that enslavers genuinely believe that the enslaved want to be enslaved. Chesnutt only included Grandison when it was in relation to the Owens’ so that the reader could only see how Grandison acts around them. When readers learn that Grandison did eventually run away with his family, it becomes clear that Grandison was never being serious; he was taking advantage of Colonel Owens’s obliviousness. He presented Grandison as inferior throughout the story because that’s how Grandison wanted to be perceived, but through the ending we learn that Grandison is anything but