A man on his judgment day, reflecting on his moral responsibility for past actions and the possibility of redemption—this is an important motif not only in The Confessions of Nat Turner but in Styron's two other novels as well. (p. 110)

[Particularly] in The Confessions of Nat Turner, the recollective character of the hero's meditation on past experience provides the structural key to the novel. When The Confessions of Nat Turner is viewed from this perspective, the existential questions that Styron poses are placed in sharp focus, and the novel transcends the many heated arguments concerning the relationship between black characters and a white author and the institution of slavery in the Old South.

Nat's confession is much more than a series of flashbacks; it is a recollection of past experience. (p. 111)

Nat's confession has all the distinguishing characteristics of a recollection as defined by [Gabriel Marcel]. Faced...