Initially, In the Conjure Tales by Charles W. Chesnutt, I was interested in the tales that Uncle Julius told, and how those tales reflected slavery in the South. My focus and interest drifted when I had to play the character John, who is also the narrator. I noticed that even though John is the narrator, he has little dialogue that actually belongs to him, since he is basically quoting Uncle Julius throughout the novel; and the same applies to Annie, who has less dialogue than John. I also notices that John, as the narrator, is narrating Uncle’s Julius speech in the AAVE language. By playing John, I learned more about the Northerner’s fantasies to start businesses in the South, since the Northerners were taking advantage of the South’s post-bellum conditions by purchasing inexpensive land.

One major obstacle when playing John was that John is the antagonist in the novel, and the least likeable character. For me, it was difficult playing a character who embodies a form of superiority over other characters. At first, I wasn’t sympathetic of John, but by playing John, I was able to pleasurably create a background story for John. One of the pleasures of playing the novel was that I was able to depict, or portray John the way I wanted, or at least tried to make John to be more sympathetic and possibly likeable. The frustrating part of playing the novel was researching characteristics of Northerners in the late 1800s that might be likeable; In my search, most characteristics of Northerners were of the stereotypical “Yankee”, who is rational and liberal who move to the South to fulfill their fantasies.

I decided to find information about John in the text, and when I was re-reading the “Goophered Grapevine” tale, I noted the reasons why John decided to go move to the South and then tried to connect his reason to why someone would move or travelled to a different location; One reason was to start his business in a vineyard in an inexpensive location, and the other reason was because the South was the perfect environment for his wife’s medical condition. I then started to focus on John’s business, and based some of my moves by talking about his business, and also in the relationship he had with his wife. There was pleasure in trying to provide and create possible background information of John’s business experience, since not much is said in the novel. Also, it was interesting to explore John’s relationship with his wife and how it was possibly affected by John’s vineyard business. Overall it was fun creating John’s background information, although I tried to make John a bit more sympathetic, I had to maintain John’s antagonistic characteristics, and so I had to talk about John believing that Southerners are ignorant because they believe in superstitions.

If I were to play the game again, I would pick the same character, John. I would like to expanded on my moves, specially on my “Philosophy and Tales” move since I still find it interesting that Annie and John don’t have the same interest; Maybe I can add a move about the differences of a female Northerner and a male Northerner where John talks about those differences. Maybe I would have Annie talk about those differences and have John narrate it to us, and explore the way he decides to narrate Annie’s dialogue to us. Also, It would be interesting to make a move where John critiques Uncle Julius’ AAVE, and maybe have John talk about whether AAVE is a dialect or a language or and base it on racialinguistics research. Also, maybe instead of basing my moves on the text, I would like add moves that are base from external research.