The Story of Uncle Jimbilly

This week’s readings were a much easier read than many assignments in the past. There were several chapters written by Katherine Anne Porter that we were assigned to read, and the one I found the most interesting was “The Witness.”
The Witness begins with an introduction to Uncle Jimbilly and his character. Uncle Jimbilly is described as an older man with fragile hands that hurt from all the work he has done in his life. We learn of all the things that Uncle Jimbilly has made in his lifetime with his hands. Some things he has made are fences, chicken coops, barn doors, window panes, fixed sagging hinges and patched up roofs, repaired carriage tops and cranky plows. Uncle Jimbilly was very crafty with his hands and was had the ability to carve miniature tombstones out of blocks of wood. He kept himself very busy, and I feel that he always kept himself occupied because he had a lot of stress built up from his days of slavery. While he makes things I feel this is a therapy for Uncle Jimbilly to be able to take his anger and stress out of the things he makes, and in the end once whatever he is making is complete, he feels a sense of accomplishment and success.
Uncle Jimbilly recalls in vivid detail his experience as a slave. He tells stories to the three children, who did not know much about slavery, except that Negroes used to be slaves. They did not understand exactly what this meant, or to what extent they were abused. The only impression they knew that slavery had on Uncle Jimbilly was that from this experience, Uncle Jimbilly did not take orders from anyone. This experience had a very bad effect on him, as well as any other person that went through this horrible time. But, it changed Uncle Jimbilly and left him with a permanent temper that was very short. The children knew not to test his waters; as well everyone else knew this too. Uncle Jimbilly’s temper made him come off as very unfriendly and he would suddenly get very annoyed and no one knew why. I feel this emotion came from being a slave and going through this hard time. Uncle Jimbilly would always threaten to do many things to many people, such as killing them in very disturbing ways, but claims he never followed through because he never could get around to actually doing them. When I read this part, I was unsure if Uncle Jimbilly was being serious, or would state these threats as a joke. The things he would say he was going to do were almost funny, but at the same time it was shocking to think that someone could come up with something like this. As well, the reading is left with a threat. It was stated in the reading, “..But some day, somebody was going to get a mighty big surprise, and meanwhile everybody had better look out.” This makes me question Uncle Jimbilly’s “joking manner” about threatening to kill people, especially with the amount of hatred he has inside of him from going through the times of slavery.