Vyry as a Creative Survivor in Margaret Walker's Jubilee
This essay examines Vyry, the protagonist of Margaret Walker's novel Jubilee, as a creative survivor whose innate intelligence, courage, and capacity for forgiveness allow her to endure slavery, the Civil War, and post-war racism in the Deep South. The paper traces Vyry's development across the novel's three sections — her childhood under slavery, her experiences during the Civil War, and her struggles during Reconstruction — arguing that her refusal to succumb to bitterness is central to her identity as a survivor. Drawing on Walker's own reflections in How I Wrote Jubilee, the essay demonstrates that Vyry's forgiveness is not a weakness but a vital source of personal strength.
- Introduction: Vyry as a Creative Survivor: Overview of Vyry's identity as a survivor
- Childhood and the Ante-Bellum Years: Vyry's birth, mother's death, and slave childhood
- The Civil War Years: Resilience Under Devastation: Vyry's patience and strength during the war
- Reconstruction and Racism: The Adult Vyry: Klan violence and racism in post-war South
- Forgiveness as Survival: Vyry's forgiveness as her defining strength
- Conclusion: Triumph of the Free Spirit: Vyry's ultimate triumph over hatred and racism
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What makes this paper effective
- The essay maintains a clear, consistent thesis — that Vyry's forgiveness is inseparable from her survival — and returns to it in each section, giving the argument coherence across the novel's three-part structure.
- Direct quotations from both the novel and Walker's reflective essay How I Wrote Jubilee are integrated naturally and used to ground analytical claims in textual evidence.
- The paper frames Vyry's character in terms of what she chooses not to become (bitter, vengeful), which is a persuasive analytical move that distinguishes this reading from a simple plot summary.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates the technique of character-driven thematic analysis: it selects a single interpretive lens (creative survivorship) and applies it systematically across each stage of the protagonist's life. By supplementing primary-text evidence with the author's own commentary in How I Wrote Jubilee, the student shows awareness of authorial intent as a supporting — not replacing — form of literary evidence.
Structure breakdown
The essay follows a chronological structure that mirrors the novel's own three-part organization — ante-bellum childhood, Civil War years, and Reconstruction — before closing with a thematic section on forgiveness and a brief conclusion. This mirroring of the source text's architecture is an effective organizational choice that keeps the argument grounded in the narrative's own progression.
Introduction: Vyry as a Creative Survivor
In Margaret Walker's novel Jubilee, the main character Vyry — the daughter of a plantation owner and his Black mistress in the Civil War Era South — is a creative survivor. Vyry's innate intelligence and strength help her to both survive and flourish, despite the terrible challenges she faces throughout her life. As a child, Vyry is defined by her illegitimate birth and her mother's death. In the second section of the novel, Vyry weathers the difficulties of the Civil War. In the third section, she deals with an adult world of resettlement and racism. Throughout these struggles, Vyry's exceptional character acts as the backbone of her capacity to survive.
She emerges as a woman who is not bitter, despite the brutality and harshness of her experience. It is in this ability to forgive and move on that Vyry's character is best showcased. She has not only survived, but triumphed over racism and cruelty, and her story is truly one of a creative survivor.
Jubilee tells the story of Vyry, the illegitimate daughter of a white plantation owner and his Black mistress. Set in the time of the American Civil War, it is the story of Vyry's ability to not only survive her circumstances, but eventually triumph over the brutality and racism of the Deep South.
Vyry survives and flourishes despite the enormity of the difficulties that lie before her. In the course of her lifetime, she must deal with the reality of slavery, the death of her mother, the sale of close friends and family, and the challenges of war and resettlement. Vyry faces brutal racism in the violence of the Ku Klux Klan, as well as in the attitudes and actions of white plantation owners and broader white society. She must also navigate the minefields of first love and the joy and sorrow of family as a Black woman in the South during the Civil War era.
Childhood and the Ante-Bellum Years
In the first section of the novel, Sis Hetta's Child — the Ante-Bellum Years, Walker chronicles Vyry's childhood. The novel begins with a sad and graphic description of the death of Hetta, Vyry's biological mother. Of Vyry's mother, Walker writes: "It wasn't the first time this heavy breeding woman, whose babes came too fast, tearing her flesh in shreds, had had a hard and complicated time… She was bloated and swollen beyond recognition… Hetta started having terrible fits and hemorrhaging…" (6). Vyry's childhood is marked by her resemblance to her white father, and Big Missy Dutton constantly and viciously punishes the light-skinned Vyry for her audacity in resembling a white child.
The Civil War Years: Resilience Under Devastation
In the second section of the novel, "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory" — The Civil War Years, Walker shows Vyry to be a resourceful young woman. Vyry weathers the devastation of the Civil War with patience and strength as her world is turned upside down, and she is virtually helpless to stop the destruction. She watches her old tormentors and owners reduced to ruin by the war and sees the devastating effect of poverty and powerlessness. Throughout the ordeal, Vyry is compassionate and helpful. Walker never allows the reader to sense that Vyry takes any satisfaction — or feels any justice — in the sometimes terrible and ironic misfortunes that befall her old tormentors.
Conclusion: Triumph of the Free Spirit
In Margaret Walker's novel Jubilee, the main character Vyry is a creative survivor. She uses her innate intelligence, strength, and courage to overcome a life marked by racism, slavery, brutality, and war. At the end of the novel, Vyry emerges as a warm, happy woman who has never succumbed to bitterness and hatred, despite the brutality of her experiences. It is her refusal to be overcome by hatred that best demonstrates that Vyry is a true creative survivor. Jubilee is ultimately the story of the triumph of Vyry's free spirit over the racism of the South.
Works Cited
Walker, Margaret. How I Wrote Jubilee.
Walker, Margaret. Jubilee. Houghton Mifflin Co., 1999.
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