The Confessions of Nat Turner

Reading, throughout Nat’s story, is critical not only to status but also to comfort. The central intrigue of both Part 1 and Part 4 is Nat’s desire for a Bible, which he begins “to hunger for down inside [him] with a hunger” (29 )that makes him ache. His connection to God is, in many ways, mediated by his quest for literacy, as his education with Miss Nell and Marse Samuel mostly revolves around Bible reading. Yet, when Nat gains a Bible just before his death, he knows that he “would not open it now even if [he] had the light to read it by” (411).

Faith and literacy are the means by which some white people, like Marse Samuel and Margaret Whitehead, gain admiration for Nat. His ability to read is one of the many reasons why Nat envisions himself as superior to others who cannot read. Still, others like Benjamin Turner express the belief that, no matter how much a black person learns to read, he will still be “an animal with the brain of a human child that will never get wise nor learn honesty nor acquire any human ethics” (161).