After reading "The Goophered Grapevine" by myself, I honestly had no investment in the story, and wasn't sure of what I had even just read. The dialect in this writing made it hard to read and so, hard to understand. But, after the talk we had in class about the story, I not only understand the story better, but I actually like it and want to read the next one, out loud of course. :-)The discussion about the second story made it sound really interesting and I went and read it even though it was no longer required.
I found it really interesting that the stories became more and more "preachy" as time went on. As big things began happening in the US, Chesnutt used hidden humor and underlying actions between the characters that shows the overall northern sympathy for southern blacks.
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I agree now with your statement that the stories because increasingly more preachy but at the time I was reading them, the thought never crossed my mind. I liked Chesnutt's stories because I didn't have to pause and consider what everything meant. They were actually the first stories I didn't count down the pages as I went, and I think Chesnutt's talent lay in the fact that you can receive a message without mentally having to figure it out. With "The Wife of His Youth", the message was very plain to see and it didn't require the reader to analyze what the story was trying to say. The preachiness was very well-contained within the stories, I thought.
Chesnutt may have been trying both subtlety and preaching, since his message was so important.
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