Loading Likes... One of the most interesting things I found about these short stories was goophering and how it highlights the cultural differences between African Americans and white people. In most of the stories, Chesnutt uses goophering as the great equalizer between enslaved African Americans and their white owners. When a problem arises that was impossible for the enslaved African Americans to solve by mundane means, for example getting Sandy out of having to go to a far-off plantation or getting Sis Becky back, they would turn to a wise woman who can goopher. Goophering often takes the form of transforming a person into a different creature or plant, but it can also take the form of a curse or by commanding animals to perform certain tasks. On the surface, it looks like goophering is a part of Julius’s stories as a coping mechanism, merely an element of escapism made to make those who listen feel better about their situation. This is certainly what the white narrator believes, calling Julius’s stories “ingenious fairy tales” and saying that African Americans will “never rise in the world until they throw off these childish superstitions” (58). But to Julius, goophering is very real and he believes in the power that it holds. To him it’s not escapism at all, rather it’s how the world works. African American culture is so closely tied to the land, partly because of slavery, and Chesnutt uses goophering to portray that.