Brrer Rabbit Stories By Daniel Harris

Witness Recount In his "Brer Rabbit Stories", nineteenth- century author Joel Chandler Harris offers a collection of colorful folkloric tales where he portrays vividly his childhood south. To paint a more accurate image of his stories, Chandler uses stereotypical characters of the region in his narrative; there is intrinsically no real plot but an old man entertaining a young boy. The author also exploits the vernacular of the region to convey his message and insist on their traditional and cultural aspects. The stories feature the relationship between an old African-American slave story-teller and the child who comes to listen to him: ““Once ‘pon a time,” said Uncle Remus to the little boy”. Uncle Remus is the stereotype of the nice old
To accentuate that reality, Joel Chandler Harris blends an African-American dialect heard in his childhood and a vernacular spelling and grammatical structure to reproduce genuine oral tradition in these stories. The reader can see the life of the slave and his master in the dialogues reported: “Who dat come a-knockin’ dis time er de year,’ fo’ de corn’s done planted, er de cotton-crap’s pitched?” Thanks to these stylistic techniques, he enhances the local color character, emphasizing details related to that specific culture and economy, landscape and society. The author presents his audience with the rhythm and pattern of the pronunciation of a particular culture, the African-American South, in a way they may not have been exposed to previously. Reading the texts is very tricky as the author wants us to believe that he transcripts exactly the narrative of Uncle Remus: “ferter pleasure de yuther creeturs.” It may be a lot easier to understand when the text is read by a person who can pronounce it appropriately, but for a foreign ear, it is really challenging although still quite charming because it sounds so authentic, almost as if possessing an anthropological