BIRTH OF A NATION

BIRTH OF A NATION 

Uhhh, yeah. Seeing Nat turner playing hide and seek with a white boy in the beginning of Birth of a Nation makes a lot of people scratch their heads. Weren’t white kids not supposed to play with children of color? What do you think the director is trying to portray here? During this time in Southampton County, VA, many slaves along side Nat Turner wanted to fight their way to Jerusalem.

Since the beginning of Nat Turners time as a kid, he didn’t really know right from wrong. He thought playing with the white children was a normal thing. But little did he know things were changing. When Nat followed his father in the middle of the night to steal food and the slave catchers caught him and asked for his pass. Nat knew that things were going to change when his father said he had to go and told Nat that he is a child of God. Even as a young child, after seeing his mom be slapped and him being yelled at in his face, he wanted change. His beliefs of God were strong once he was given a bible, even when he started picking cotton from a young age.

Growing up religious, he then led mass gatherings in a barn giving the word of the lord. Giving all the slave workers like himself hope. Nat’s views changed drastically as he grew up. For example, him giving the lady in the carriage a doll that her child dropped, or later him riding with his master finding another slave shot and dead on the trial.

Besides the fact that Nat was going to different slave masters houses to give the “word of the Lord”, what REALLY got him heated was seeing a little white girl, leading a black slave girl on a leash, as if she was a dog.

So many different situations are giving Nat the power and ideas to start a slave rebellion. He just can’t take anymore of it. With fellow slaves getting their teeth chiseled out of their mouth and being fed forcefully, or the fact that his wife was beating severally bad by 3 men for fetching water without a pass. Nat has just baptized a white man on Sam’s property and is screaming scriptures off the top of his lungs and gets hit with the butt end of a rifle, then whipped. This SURELY is the last straw for him to start his rebellion a movement.

Nat gathers up 6 other slaves and tells them that they are the chosen ones by God, and to wait for the Lords sign. When the time is right, they are ready to strike. His motivation is his wife. Her telling him to fight for her is everything he needs to rebel.

The Slave rebellion has begun. Killing Sam with an axe, along with Nat’s other soldier beating the other white man. Their time has finally come about. Going to different towns, killing off white slave owners and trying to take everything they have.

So, what is the director trying to portray here? Is he also giving an example of how another slave rebellions played out? Not to mention the year Nat Turner was born, another man by the name of Gabriel Prosser also led a slave rebellion.

-Fabian Carlon