Compare the characters of Old Harjo in "The Problem of Old Harjo" and Uncle Julius "Goophered Grapevine" in regard to how they were powerless.

The character of Old Harjo in John Milton Oskison's short
story "The Problem of Old Harjo" is a Creek Indian who has been convinced by a
missionary woman, Miss Evans, to convert to Christianity (Oskison himself is a
Cherokee). Old Harjo has two wives. Interpretation of Scripture since around the twelfth
century prohibits christian men from having more than wife. Old Harjo faces the dilemma
of knowing how to blend his new beliefs with his old life. He also faces the problem of
deciding what authority he sill recognize and embrace: his ancestral and cultural
authority or his new religious authority, an authority presented to him in the form of
Mrs. Rowell, who is the Director of the Indian Mission. These dilemmas make Old Harjo
feel powerless as he is psychologically and practically forced from both sides of the
dilemma: If he wants to embrace the new faith Miss Evans has taught him, he has no
choice--according to the authority of Mrs. Rowell.

The
character of Uncle Julius McAdoo in Charles Waddell Chestnutt's short story "Goophered
Grapevine" is a former slave of advanced age living in the South and functions in the
story structure as the narrator of the interior framed tale. His narration bridges the
life of the Northerner of the frame who is interested in buying the plantation with the
conjurer of the past. We learn from his story that, as his surname is McAdoo, he is the
son of the previous plantation owner, "Mars Dugal' McAdoo" and he was a slave to his
father on his father's plantation. His tale about the "goophered" plantation reveals the
evil that was visited upon slaves by their masters as when Uncle Julius tells that Mars
Dugal set up "guns en steel traps" in order to catch the slaves he suspected of eating
from his harvest of grapes. Uncle Julius's tale also demonstrates how, following
emancipation, former slaves had the liberty to turn, or attempt to events, to their
advantage: As the Northern says when the frame returns following Uncle Julius's
narrative, "[Our] respectable revenue from the neglected grapevines. ... doubtless,
accounted for his advice to me not to buy the vineyard, though whether it inspired the
goopher story I am unable to state."

In the end result,
while Uncle Juluius experienced powerlessness as a slave (although, as he says of the
slaves behavor,"en de grapes kep' on a-goin des de same"), as an emancipated former
slave, he found he had some power to direct his destiny as proven by his situation on
the Northerner's new plantation: "I believe, however, that the wages I pay him for his
services are more than an equivalent for anything he lost by the sale of the vineyard."
This contrasts with Old Harjo's situation in which power over directing his preferred
and desired destiny never entered his hands: He was forced to bow to one external force
or the other. There is a common element in their powerlessness in that Old Harjo and
Uncle Julius were each powerless against the dictates of the white culture surrounding
them.