The Confessions of Nat Turner

When Nat meets Jonathan Cobb, he is skinning rabbits. These animals, which he catches and from which Marse Samuel and Joseph Travis make money, give Nat a sense of ingenuity and control. Across the novel, Nat looks dismissively at animals like rabbits, and he also uses the term “animal” to speak dismissively of other enslaved people who he sees as below him.

One day, with Margaret Whitehead, he kicks a crushed turtle into a ditch. Margaret, who was hoping to save the turtle, feels intense pity for the turtle; Nat tells her that “they that doesn’t holler doesn’t hurt” (359). Part of what haunts Nat about Margaret is her awareness to “suffering things” (359), to animals that cannot speak for themselves. Although Nat’s mission is an effort to speak out against suffering, it also calls for violence. This demonstrates a different moral ethic than that which Margaret stands for, which is paternalistic care for those lesser than oneself.

Ironically, when Nat dies, his own body is “skinned,” and doctors make “grease of the flesh” (415). In other words, they deliberately treat Nat as an animal as if to fulfill Nat’s worst suspicion that black people are “brainless born, brainlessly seeking” (27) wellness like flies.