The Confessions of Nat Turner

The final part of Nat’s story begins with a vision of sleeping in a boat on the ocean, “in the arms of a steadfast and illimitable peace” (407). He envisions the ocean “arching eastward toward Africa” (407). This is the same dream as the one with which he began the book, and in it again he approaches the mysterious building, which is “neither temple nor monument nor sarcophagus” (407). Knowing that he cannot comprehend the mystery of the building, he turns away from it.

To end the story, Nat wakes up once again:“The chains at [his] feet chink in the morning’s black silence” (408). He and Hark anticipate their deaths, wondering if they will be in a chair or hung. Nat appeals to God, “hoping to find some vision, some word or sign in the profounder darkness of [his] own mind” (409). He prepares to leave the world without a sign from God and without resolving the question of what he has accomplished. Hark, meanwhile, marvels at the fact that he will be hung that day while the world, even the barking dogs, goes on as usual.

Nat drifts off again and wakes up as the morning comes, when he hears “the sad old blast of a horn as it rouses up the Negroes for work” (410). As always, Nat recounts all of the noises he hears in the town beyond the window before he leans into it and looks up to the sky to gasp at the morning star. He does not move, even as “the chill of the damp floor imprisons [his] feet in piercing icebound pain” (410).

Eventually, Nat hears motion outside his cell. Gray, it turns out, brings him a Bible, “against the will of the court” (411). Gray seems different, and Nat feels briefly as if he has never seen Gray before. As he hands over the Bible, Gray reaches through the bars and grabs Nat’s hand as he says goodbye.

He thinks of Margaret, desiring her, and feels his body “tingle with desire” (412). He pleasures himself, thinking of her, remembering a meadow in the summertime and the tones of her voice. The sound of voices and footsteps pulls him out of the fantasy, as he hears a group of men fetch Hark from his cell.

Hark, injured, releases “a wail of hurt and wild distress” (412). Nat yells at them not to hurt him: “You’ve done hurt him enough! All his life!” (412). In response, the men fall silent. But they tie Nat into the chair right there and then carry him, with some struggle, into the hallway. Hark says goodbye.

As men come to take him, Nat admits to himself that he “would have spared one” (414). Just before he dies, before he surrenders, he hears God’s voice, saying “Come, My son!” (414).

The story concludes with an explanation that “the bodies of those executed, with one exception, were buried,” but that Nat’s “was delivered to the doctors, who skinned it and made grease of the flesh” (414). One man makes a purse out of his skin. His skeleton was saved until lost.