Po' Sandy

Annie, John’s wife, is responsible for the action of the frame narrative. John and Annie move to North Carolina because of Annie’s medical condition. She sets everything in motion with her request for an outdoor kitchen, and her character conveys the final triumph for Julius—that his church group will use the schoolhouse. Annie convinces John not to tear down the building based on Julius’s story about Sandy, making her the instrument through which Julius gets what he wants from John.

Julius narrates the inner story in Chesnutt’s work. He tells John and Annie the tale of Sandy. Readers cannot be certain whether the story is “true” in the sense that Julius is relating something that happened in his past. He may have invented the story to manipulate John into preserving the schoolhouse. In either case, he helps his Northern listeners learn something about slavery and the lives of enslaved individuals.

As Sandy is named in the title of the story, the reader might expect him to be the main character. However, the story focuses on Julius, and Sandy is a device he uses to describe how inhumane slaveholders could be and to get what he ultimately wants: use of the schoolhouse. Sandy complains about the travel that takes him away from his home. The solution to the inhumane treatment of his master is to become nonhuman. He believes he will live better as a tree on his master’s property than as a person.