Jeeter Lester could have moved away to the cotton mills, like everybody else, when the soil was so depleted of nutrition that neither tobacco nor cotton could grow in it anymore. But Jeeter was a man of the land. He would rather dream of trying to plant a cotton crop than go to Heaven. He was made to farm. He couldn't farm, due to his financial situation, but he was a religious man. God would provide, even if Jeeter sometimes had to steal sweet potatoes and turnips from the neighboring places, or even rob his son-in-law, until there was nothing left to steal. Ada, his wife, needed snuff to kill the hunger pains. He was unable to provide that. Neither could he buy her a decent dress to die in one day. Not that it was a priority for the head of the family. His needs came first, and he was not going to die and have the mice eat half his face away in his coffin, like it happened with his father. No, he had clear instructions on how he was to be handled when his time would come. Ada would just have to wait her turn. Collins, Carvel (July 1, 1958). "Erskine Caldwell at Work: A Conversation With Carvel Collins". The Atlantic . Retrieved October 1, 2022. Canby, Henry Seidel. "The 100 Outstanding Books of 1924–1944". Life, 14 August 1944. Chosen in collaboration with the magazine's editors.

Erskine Caldwell does a commendable job of emphasizing how socioeconomic hardships negatively impact the psyche and relationships of everyday people. He encourages the reader to tap into their sociological imagination and discover the underlying institutional problems that heighten personal issues. The Lesters become increasingly demoralized as they try to make sense of the uncertainty faced. As a result, the family descends into mayhem, which causes separation and death for some relatives. Update this section!I’ve never read anything like ‘Tobacco Road’ and although it’s interesting reading, it also evokes a sense of unease, disquiet, and rumblings of anger. The Lesters do not seem much better than animals, living pretty much instinctually, trying to satisfy hunger and sexual appetites. Their house is in disrepair and nothing is ever fixed. When the roof leaks, they just move to another corner of the room. Jeeter dreams about growing cotton, but no creditor will lend him money. They live on land once owned by Grandfather Lester, long since lost to creditors and taxmen. There are crazy, almost comedic fiascos that occur, but the world these people live in causes my humor to dry up. Jeeter demeans Ellie May because she has a harelip that he never could find the money to get fixed. What man would want to look at that face, he asks. He sells Pearl and leers at his daughter-in-law. A lot of times, these characters just seem dumb.

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]Virginia Moffett Fletcher Caldwell Letter 1984 and 1985". A Guide to Materials on Women Women, Materials on Multiple numbers. Special Collections, University of Virginia Library . Retrieved October 2, 2022. Rich goes on to say that Erskine Caldwell is a "progenitor of what could be called the degenerate school of American fiction," which I suppose could be called a subgenre of the so-called grit-lit genre. At any rate, it seems that a straight line can be drawn from Caldwell to writers such as Harry Crews, who also attempted to combine tragedy and comedy in their novels. 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. 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.

This won't make sense to someone who hasn't read the book, and will if one does read or has read it, but constitutes no spoiler: GO RATS!! Sic 'em! El autor se centra en reflejar la ignorancia y el embrutecimiento, causa y consecuencia a la vez de la miseria, ya que todas las decisiones de todos los personajes, empezando por el pater familias Lester Jeter, son absurdas y erróneas. Son incapaces de analizar la realidad con sentido común y eso hace que nos distanciemos de ellos y los observemos como a los personajes de un guiñol. Such a harsh story of hard times in a hard place. Though the Lesters definitely appear to be more a type than a real family (in fact no one seems particularly real) rural poverty certainly was (and still is) real. There are many messages here about the loss of land, the state of tenant farmers, etc, but there are also messages about personal responsibility. Jeeter finds that he’s once again lived through the season for beginning spring planting without beginning to plant anything, and reflects sadly upon his lot: “He still could not understand why he had nothing, and would never have anything, and there was no one who knew and who could tell him. It was the unsolved mystery of his life” (p. 228). And one last attempt on his part to go through the motions of preparing the ground for spring planting results in one final tragedy for the Lester family. Biography". John Wade. Archived from the original on September 29, 2011 . Retrieved September 29, 2011.Caldwell occasionally steps somewhat clumsily into the narrative to discuss his message more boldly. Otherwise he lets the story provide the details of the rich in power, tenant farmers set loose with nothing, the land being lost to poor use practices over generations. Daddy said he never had a 'real' toothbrush until he joined the service when he was 17. (He made them from a twig of a specific tree branch by flaring and separating one end to act as bristles. He showed us how he did it on one visit to see Grandma.) This is one of the most powerful books I have ever read. While there were certain humorous passages, I did not find this book in the least bit funny, and I cannot understand the thinking of anyone who did. Caldwell's mother, a former teacher, tutored her son at home. [3] Caldwell was 14 when he first attended a school. [3] The author clearly was way ahead in his thinking and wrote his stories for many generations later to appreciate and understand. During his own lifetime he was not appreciated. "His first two books, Tobacco Road (1932) and God’s Little Acre (1933), made Caldwell famous, but this was not initially due to their literary merit. Both novels depict the South as beset by racism, ignorance, cruelty, and deep social inequalities. They also contain scenes of sex and violence that were graphic for the time. Both books were banned from public libraries and other venues, especially in the South. Caldwell was prosecuted for obscenity, though exonerated."

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.)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. After he returned from World War II, Caldwell took up residence in Connecticut, then in Arizona with third wife, June Johnson (J.C. Martin). In 1957, Caldwell married Virginia Moffett Fletcher Caldwell Hibbs, who had drawn illustrations for a recent book of his, [14] moving to Twin Peaks in San Francisco, [17] later moving to Paradise Valley, Arizona, in 1977. [14] Of his residence in the San Francisco Bay Area, he once said: "I live outside San Francisco. That's not exactly the United States." [18] During the last twenty years of his life, his routine was to travel the world for six months of each year, taking with him notebooks in which to jot down his ideas. Many of these notebooks were not published but can be examined in a museum dedicated to him in the town square of Moreland, Georgia, where the home in which he was born was relocated and dedicated to his memory. I loved Caldwell's writing and will read more books written by him. It was all I expected and more. With that said we know that reading is an education. Reading allows a person to learn about anything and everything. This knowledge can be obtained at your local library where readers can find information at their fingertips which, as readers, we already know.