Tobacco Road

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Lov departs and Caldwell reflects on Jeeter's position as a tenant farmer in the South. Even though Jeeter, like so many others around him, had the urge to plant a crop during this time of the year, there was nothing he could do. His landlord was an absentee who abandoned Jeeter and the rest of those who had lived on his land and given him shares of their crop in exchange for credit for seeds and fertilizer. The stores in the city would not grant any more credit to Jeeter or any of the other farmers because it was too risky and there were too many asking for it. He was a very sinful man. Probably the most sinful man in the country, he claims, with some of the neighboring children bearing his resemblance, and the new couple who moved in years ago ...Ada did not want him to finish his sentences, when he got this excited about his legacy. Seventeen legitimate children born by Ada later, with twelve surviving, he was a man who knew how to plant seed and let them grow. He did not see any other future for himself or his land, than planting as much seed in any way he could. That is God's plan for a man like Jeeter Lester. But despite all this there are hints of humor within the bleak landscapes and several times I couldn't help but laugh. A strange paradox.

The next day, Jeeter talks Sister Bessie and Dude into taking him to Augusta to sell some firewood. They struggle during the trip to get there because they forgot to put oil in the car and they have damaged the engine. Once in Augusta, they cannot find anyone to buy the wood and end up selling the car's spare tire for extra cash. It becomes late, so they decide to stay in a hotel. Sister Bessie is pulled from the room and offered other places to sleep, finding herself sharing beds with several other men. Everyone is unattractive, except 12 year-old yellow-haired and lovely Pearl Lester Bensey who is married to Jeeter’s friend Lov Bensey. Ok, let’s call it what it is, everyone seems to be ugly but it’s all ugly; the land, the situation, their rag clothes, the corn husk beds, the dirty sheets. Everything is ugly and damaged just like the land. The audiobook narration by John MacDonald is good. The intonation matches the language of these uneducated, poor, depraved souls. Of course the dialog is filled with grammatical errors. The Lesters are struggling to get by on their plantation. The Great Depression has turned the American economy upside down, and it's corrupting the Lesters' lives. Unfortunately, they have turned to morally corrupt antics, highlighting the historic racism of Southerners during this time period, among other difficulties. 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.Cook, Sylvia J. (1983). "Review: Stories of Life/North & South: Selections from the Best Short Stories of Erskine Caldwell". The Southern Literary Journal. 16 (1): 126–130. ISSN 0038-4291. JSTOR 20077726. I loved Caldwell's writing and will read more books written by him. It was all I expected and more. Novelist Erskine Caldwell's Ashes Rest in Ashland, Ore". Jefferson Public Radio. Archived from the original on May 24, 2013 . Retrieved March 14, 2012. Jeeter has lived on the same plot of land since he was born, and even though his standard of living continues to decline until he and his family begin to starve, Jeeter stubbornly refuses to move to the city to make a better life for himself by working in a cotton mill. Such a life, he insists, would be impossible for him to live. What is primary: poverty or depravity? Actually, it is a vicious circle – poverty aggravates depravity and depravity exacerbates poverty and the process continues until human being is reduced to the bestial condition. And then man begins to exist ruled by animal instincts and physiological needs.

Jeeter sets a fire to burn off broom sedge and hopes somehow to find enough credit to farm his land that spring. As Jeeter and Ada sleep, sparks from the fire ignite the shingles of their house, which burns to the ground, killing them in their sleep. As the novel closes, Dude makes his first mention of working: He voices the same thoughts of plowing the Lester land that Jeeter had expressed throughout the story, indicating that the vicious cycle in which poor Southern farmers such as the Lesters are trapped continues. a b c d McDowell, Edwin (April 13, 1987). "Erskine Caldwell, 83, Is Dead; Wrote Stark Novels Of South". The New York Times . Retrieved October 1, 2022. The tobacco road that passes by the rural Georgia home of Jeeter Lester and his family, in Erskine Caldwell’s 1932 novel Tobacco Road, may speak to the prosperous colonial history of tobacco farming. But by the early-20th-century setting of this novel, the tobacco market has long since gone bust, and the cotton market seems likely to follow. And impoverished small farmers like Jeeter Lester, sharecroppers who are trying to make a living through tenant farming, are trapped in a system where they are bound to lose – even if they don’t know that they’re trapped.

If you're looking for an off-beat classic, or depression-era literature that isn't too depressing, Tobacco Road is a great choice.

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. 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. 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. They weren't much on education either with all, I believe, of the nine kids in the family dropping out of school and the girls, I think, marrying while in their mid to late teens. None ever divorced either. I have underlined what I question. Does poverty do that to the extent that it is drawn in this book? I do not equate poverty with stupidity. The Lesters had seventeen kids. Five died. When the novel begins only two (Dude and Ellie May, an eighteen-year-old with an extremely ugly cleft lip) remain still at home with mom (Ada), dad (Jeeter) and grandma. The son Dude who is sixteen gets married to a women preacher named Bessie Rice. She is thirty-nine. She has a deformed face. These six individuals and a few others are drawn as imbeciles, as animals, as depraved, crude human beings. Religion is used as an excuse - for laziness, for doing nothing, for accepting fate. The only sign of hope are the ten children who have left. Little is known or said about them. The little that is said draws them too as unforgiving, cruel and uncompassionate individuals.

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. Erskine Caldwell's political sympathies were with the working class, and he used his experiences with farmers and common workers to write stories portraying their lives and struggles. Later in life he presented public seminars on the typical conditions of tenant-sharecroppers in the South. [11] One of the few times in my time here on goodreads when I feel like writing: OMG. ... OMG, and really meaning it. Erskine Caldwell Biography". Id.mind.net. April 11, 1987. Archived from the original on August 18, 2009 . Retrieved August 31, 2009.

Erskine Preston Caldwell (December 17, 1903 – April 11, 1987) was an American novelist and short story writer. [7] [8] His writings about poverty, racism and social problems in his native Southern United States, in novels such as Tobacco Road (1932) and God's Little Acre (1933) won him critical acclaim.The reader is likely to be appalled by Jeeter Lester’s insistence that doing nothing – squatting on a piece of land, perpetually on the edge of starvation – is somehow better than taking a paying job. Yet that agrarian ideal of holding to the traditional farming way of life is deeply held by a number of the characters in Tobacco Road. Late in the novel, Lov reflects on how and why he might be disposed to agree with Jeeter about holding out for farming rather than joining the exodus of former farmers leaving the farms to seek work in the mills: “The mills is sort of like automobiles – they’re all right to fool around in and have a good time in, but they don’t offer no love like the ground does. The ground sort of looks out after the people who keeps their feet on it. When people stand on planks in buildings all the time, and walk around on hard streets, the ground sort of loses interest in the human” (p. 239).