Tobacco Road

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Caldwell claimed that he wrote the novel as "a rebuke of the perfumed 'moonlight and magnolias' literature of the South." Well, it was that.

Caldwell’s characterization of America’s lowest class may have been published in 1932, but its legacy (and their progeny) still abounds. U.S. pop culture is rife with representatives: Ernest T. Bass, Jethro Bodine, Junior Samples, Larry the Cable Guy… If you're looking for an off-beat classic, or depression-era literature that isn't too depressing, Tobacco Road is a great choice. Collins, Carvel (July 1, 1958). "Erskine Caldwell at Work: A Conversation With Carvel Collins". The Atlantic . Retrieved October 1, 2022. Tobacco Road tells the story of the Lester family. The Lester family consists of Jeeter and Ada Lester as well as their seventeen children. The Lesters are former cotton farmers (turned tenant farmers) who live in the Southern part of the United States. They live on a crumbling plantation that once belonged to their ancestors, with two of their children. These two children - Ellie May and Dude - cannot afford to live on their own. They are both handicapped - the unmarried daughter has a cleft lip, and the son is mentally disabled. Yet Jeeter’s laziness may speak to his discontent with the lot that life has given him. Caldwell adds later that “Jeeter postponed nearly everything a man could think of, but when it came to plowing the land and planting cotton, he was as persistent as any man could be about such things. He started out each day with his enthusiasm at fever pitch, and by night he was as determined as ever to find a mule he could borrow and a merchant who would give him credit for seed-cotton and guano” (p. 103). It is as if Jeeter is willing to work – but only on the terms that he finds honorable as a farming man.Tobacco Road has haunted me for days. The characters and their shenanigans have permeated my subconscious. I cannot help but dwell on it even when I am not actively reading.

Tobacco Road is a novel by acclaimed writer Erskine Caldwell. Tobacco Road is the story of one family's inability to move on when life does not go as planned. Jeeter Lester has always worked the land on which his grandfather once farmed tobacco; however, debts have turned Jeeter into a sharecropper on land that the owner no longer wants to farm. Jeeter vows every year that he will find a way to buy the seed and fertilizer needed to farm the land, but every year he finds excuses not to do the work until too much time passes and planting would be futile. Tobacco Road is a story of futility, of giving up, a story that will either inspire the reader to work that much harder or continue to give up in the face of adversity. Years ago I was visiting Daddy's birthplace (at home) on a cotton farm in southwestern North Carolina, between Hayesville, North Carolina and Hiwassee, Georgia. I was sitting on the steps of Philadelphia Church with my cousin Rex and I asked him why Grandma and Grandpa moved around so much? He laughed asking me “you don’t know?” No, I didn't know. Rex said they were itinerant sharecroppers and they had to move where land was more fertile, where their crops would grow to feed the family. (I’m from a small (pop. 13,900) Florida city in north Florida, not a farmer for sure, so this came as news to me, the why of their moving frequently.)No, the book was not depressing to me personally although it was a depressing subject. The book was about a hard life that was slow to disappear. One of the few times in my time here on goodreads when I feel like writing: OMG. ... OMG, and really meaning it.

Alongside Jeeter’s preoccupation with farming the land is his preoccupation with his own imminent death. Ada as well is fixated on her death, but their morbidity does not take the form of lamentation or self-pity. Ada's main concern is that she not be buried in her tattered, old, out-of-style calico dress, and Jeeter's main concern is that his body not be left in the old corn storage shed where it might be eaten by rats. He has had a terrible phobia of rats ever since he saw his dead father’s face half-eaten by a rat the day of his funeral. Neither of these two characters have any doubts that they are going to die sometime soon, and it is not their present life but their lifeless bodies which they care about most. Possibly they realize that their way of life is already dead; thus their primary concern becomes not the preservation of that life but its appearance during burial. Broadwell, Elizabeth Pell; Hoag, Ronald Wesley (Winter 1982). "Interview: Erskine Caldwell, The Art of Fiction No. 62". Paris Review. Winter 1982 (86). Escrita en 1932, en plena Gran Depresión, esta breve y ácida novela refleja el triste destino de los pequeños agricultores arruinados por los cambios económicos que estaban teniendo lugar. Caldwell was born on December 17, 1903, in the small town of White Oak, Coweta County, Georgia. He was the only child of Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church minister Ira Sylvester Caldwell and his wife Caroline Preston (née Bell) Caldwell, a schoolteacher. Rev. Caldwell's ministry required moving the family often, to places including Florida, Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina and North Carolina. When he was 15 years old, his family settled in Wrens, Georgia. [11] His mother Caroline was from Virginia. Her ancestry included English nobility which held large land grants in eastern Virginia. Both her English ancestors and Scots-Irish ancestors fought in the American Revolution. Ira Caldwell's ancestors were Scots-Irish and had also been in America since before the revolution and had fought in it. [12] Erskine Caldwell aims to take the reader out of their comfort zone into unknown territory. He wanted to challenge us. And he succeeded. Many scenes were filled with cruel images.a b c d e f g h i "Erskine Caldwell Dead at 83". AP NEWS. Paradise Valley, Arizona. April 12, 1987 . Retrieved October 1, 2022. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt had the same effect on me than this book. I laughed and cried simultaneously. Nobody or nothing in the book endeared me to the situation. Yet, I could not help but keep on reading, hoping that something good will happen for the family. a b c d e Caldwell, Jay E. "Wanting to learn more about his dad leads Erskine Caldwell's son to write a book of his own". Arizona Daily Star . Retrieved October 1, 2022. Erskine Caldwell Biography". Id.mind.net. April 11, 1987. Archived from the original on August 18, 2009 . Retrieved August 31, 2009. I think every book I've ever read that was placed during the 1930’s depression had a dark tone. The depression was not the best of times for America’s economy (or the world for that matter) and of course, it's citizens.

He dropped out of Erskine College to sign aboard a boat supplying guns to Central America. [3] Caldwell entered the University of Virginia with a scholarship from the United Daughters of the Confederacy, but was enrolled for only a year. [3] He then became a football player, bodyguard, and salesman of "bad" real estate. [3] In Jeeter Lester’s case, the landowner, “Captain John,” got out of the farming business and left the community, and no one in town will lend Jeeter the money or supplies to lay in a fresh crop. Yet Jeeter insists that he should be able to farm in the old way, and not have to go work in a mill as many other farmers whom he knows have done: “The spring-time ain’t going to let you fool it by hiding away inside a durn cotton mill. It knows you got to stay on the land to feel good. That’s because humans made the mills. God made the land, but you don’t see Him building durn cotton mills. That’s how I know better than to go up there like the rest of them. I stay where God made a place for me” (p. 27). Grandma and Grandpa, Mary Jane Gibson Ledford and Mark Ledford ---Hard working people, maybe in early 40's?Es un viaje a la miseria, la pobreza que amenaza a la familia de Lester Jeter y a la que temen porque les hará inferiores a las familias de negros que les rodean, que habían estado tradicionalmente subordinados a ellos. Heredero de una plantación de algodón que en tiempos fue próspera, ahora Lester y su mujer Ada son meros arrendatarios, aunque se agarran a la esperanza de pedir un crédito para volver a plantar una cosecha. Han tenido 17 hijos, de los cuales sólo quedan en casa Ellie May con su labio leporino y su cuerpo explosivo y Dude, que no tiene una inteligencia normal. Erskine Caldwell specialized in portraying misery and wretchedness of man and was a great expert of human distress. Tobacco Road is one of the most effective trips to the bottom of human existence.