But somehow er ‘nudder de niggers foun’ out all erbout it, en dey all knowed de kitchen wuz ha’nted by Sandy’s sperrit. En bimeby hit got so Mars Marrabo’s wife herse’f wuz skeered ter go out in de yard atter dark.
Sandy's spirit, which no one has seen, hasn't done anything, yet everyone is afraid of it.
The pathetic intonation with which he lengthened out the “po’ Sandy” touched a responsive chord in our own hearts.
There is a difference when speaking the English language.
Some of these stories are quaintly humorous; others wildly extravagant, revealing the Oriental cast of the negro’s imagination; while others, poured freely into the sympathetic ear of a Northern-bred woman, disclose many a tragic incident of the darker side of slavery.
Chessnutt seems to be using Gothic elements
On attempting to take a seat in the omnibus to that place, I was told by the driver (and I never shall forget his fiendish hate). “I don’t allow niggers in here!”
there are racial problems and discrimination towards Douglass despite being in a "true abolitionists" setting.
The whole six months afterwards, that I spent with Mr. Covey, he never laid the weight of his finger upon me in anger. He would occasionally say, he didn’t want to get hold of me again. “No,” thought I, “you need not; for you will come off worse than you did before.”
At the end, it seems like Mr. Covey was the one to break and not Douglass.
I was now, for the first time in my life, a field hand. In my new employment, I found myself even more awkward than a country boy appeared to be in a large city. I had been at my new home but one week before Mr. Covey gave me a very severe whipping, cutting my back, causing the blood to run, and raising ridges on my flesh as large as my little finger.
After observing slaves being whipped, he is now being whipped, and marked.
Their joy at my return equalled their sorrow at my departure.
Douglass is "valued" in Baltimored
I had known what it was to be kindly treated; they had known nothing of the kind. They had seen little or nothing of the world. They were in very deed men and women of sorrow, and acquainted with grief. Their backs had been made familiar with the bloody lash, so that they had become callous; mine was yet tender;
The other slaves have physical marks in their backs of their experience as slaves, their experience or story is told through their callous back. Douglass back is tender which would indicate that he can see the sorrow and grief of his fellow-slaves but he hasn't experience it like they have and his tender back tells a different story. Also, he is able to tell his experience or story in this narrative.
took my little brother by the throat, threw him on the ground, and with the heel of his boot stamped upon his head till the blood gushed from his nose and ears—was well calculated to make me anxious as to my fate. After he had committed this savage outrage upon my brother
The savagery of a slave holder. Also, he is seeing the savage act happening.
I have no language to express the high excitement and deep anxiety which were felt among us poor slaves during this time.
Silenced, without a voice.
the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder
It is interesting that he notes that slavery has brutalizing effects on the slaveholder as well.
It was committed in the presence of slaves, and they of course could neither institute a suit, nor testify against him
Laws created to protect the whites from their crimes.
and in an instant poor Demby was no more
I wonder if Demby preferred death than continue living as a slave who gets constantly punished (tortured). Can his death be viewed as a suicide?
He seemed to take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish barbarity
The slave owners and their overseers are being portrayed as barbaric. The overseers are like the "apparatus" in Kafka's text.
The master is frequently compelled to sell this class of his slaves
Douglass is from a different "class" of slave since he is biracial. Also, he only has half of his racial identity since he is being rejected by his white side, his father.
It was the ideal of “book-learning”; the curiosity, born of compulsory ignorance, to know and test the power of the cabalistic letters of the white man, the longing to know.
The ballot and "book-learning" are tools that black people can use in order to strive by learning the rules or laws of the white man, and using their vote in order to change them.
and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast.
What does he mean? What is the "swarthy spectre"?
for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.
The problem of segregation, or the "veil".
The Condemned Man had an expression of such dog-like resignation that it looked as if one could set him free to roam around the slopes and would only have to whistle at the start of the execution for him to return.
The Condemned Man is being described as a loyal, obedient dog.