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Set during the Depression in the depleted farmlands surrounding Augusta, Georgia, Tobacco Road is the story of the Lesters, a family of white sharecroppers so destitute that most of their creditors have given up on them. Debased by poverty to an elemental state of ignorance and selfishness, the Lesters are preoccupied by their hunger, sexual longings, and fear that they will one day descend to a lower rung on the social ladder than the black families who live near them.
Caldwell's skillful use of dialect and his plain style make the book one of the best examples of literary naturalism in contemporary American fiction. The novel was adapted as a successful play in 1933.
kthomp25: "A very early experiment in the publication of oral history, it consisted of thirty-five life histories of sharecroppers, farmers, mill workers, townspeople, and the unemployed of the Southeast, selected from over a thousand such histories collected by the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s."… (more)
Originally written in 1932, and set in the depression era, today's social climate would find this classic with its over exaggeration of the extremely poor and simple-minds of a southern sharecropper, Jeeter Lester, and his family extremely offensive and degrading. And if this was 1932, I would even say that this family may have been a bit "retarded"...but that's no longer politically correct. So, I would say they seem to be a bit mentally challenged or else they are very naive.
Jeeter had lived and been tenant farmers of this land all his life, as was his father and his grandfather, who had started out growing tobacco. His father found the soil more suitable and prosperous for growing cotton. Jeeter barely squeezed out just enough dollars to survive each year growing cotton until the owner of the land gave up farming, himself, altogether and moved to the city. The Lesters were allowed to remain in their homes on the land rent free, but the loans for farming were cut off and repairs to the homes would be left up to the tenants, which the tenants didn't give much thought about.
This story is a crazy twist on some peoples reactions to the realities of life. But, the fact is, the basis of how they thought and behaved during those times, even the wasteful, mindless spending of some of the poorest of poors, I believe to be true. We see it even today...all the time, everywhere.
This novel shows, in an exaggerated way, of course, the degree Jeeter was willing to stoop for survival. It was always a selfish motive, even though it really was about money for food. He thought of himself first before the other family members. The problem was he was lazy, always talking the talk, and never took any action. This was the year he would burn the fields, rent a donkey and plow and plant seed-cotton and purchase the guano. But, year after year, all he did was sit on the porch and blame the rich man or God for his woes for not lending him the money. He was not flexible, and he was unwilling to change with the times. All of his children, except two, Dude and the hair-lipped Ellie Mae, had left home for the city to carve out livings for themselves.
In this twisted story, an older widowed preacher woman, Bessie, age 39, marries the 16 year old, Dude Lester. Dude readily agrees because Bessie's husband had left behind $800 in the bank, which she used to purchase a brand new car and dangled before him, even though her house was so dilapidated and leaking everywhere because the roof was caving in and they had no food and no money to even put oil or gas in the car to keep it running. No one sees anything unusual in this. Afterall, they all see they may get a little piece of the pie. The car was trashed within the first week. But hey, they were proud. It was still purchased brand new and still ran, and she had her Dude, who she was going to turn into a preacher man. ( )
First was with Lov and Pearl - I know things were different in the rural South during the Depression but it bothered me that Pearl was married off (I am pretty sure without her consent) at the age of 12. That isn't a flaw in the book, just something that creeped me out.
Initially I was bothered by the whole situation about Bessie's car too especially getting into two accidents in the first two days of owning it!. But after some thought I realized how ignorant Bessie and Dude were. I don't mean stupid but uninformed; how could they be otherwise when they had limited life experience and neither one could read or write?
That realization helped me have some sympathy for the characters until the end of the book. But that sympathy dried up with the callousness displayed towards the grandmother when Bessie and Dude ran her over with the car. Not only did they not stop but then Jeeter, Ada and Ellie May just left her lying in the dirt!. Being poor and ignorant doesn't mean that you can't be a caring person, which it seems like Caldwell is implying. That is the biggest issue I had with the book. ( )
Published in 1932, this book tells the story of Jeeter Lester, his wife, Ada, daughters, Pearl and Ellie May, son Dude, and son-in-law, Lov Bensey. The Lesters are a family of poor sharecroppers living in rural Georgia during the Great Depression. Lov married Pearl when she was twelve years old, and he is upset that she will not speak to or sleep with him. The family has had seventeen children, but some have died young and others moved to the nearby city of Augusta. The storyline is focused on the many hardships and sufferings of the rural poor. The characters seem like caricatures. Several are preoccupied with anticipating their own deaths. This book is considered a classic. I appreciate that it is a novel about the Great Depression, written contemporaneously, but do not expect anything pleasant. It is grim, bleak, and tragic – too dark for me. I am glad it is short (187 pages), or I might not have finished. ( )
Set during the Depression in the depleted farmlands surrounding Augusta, Georgia, Tobacco Road is the story of the Lesters, a family of white sharecroppers so destitute that most of their creditors have given up on them. Debased by poverty to an elemental state of ignorance and selfishness, the Lesters are preoccupied by their hunger, sexual longings, and fear that they will one day descend to a lower rung on the social ladder than the black families who live near them.
Caldwell's skillful use of dialect and his plain style make the book one of the best examples of literary naturalism in contemporary American fiction. The novel was adapted as a successful play in 1933.
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Tobacco Road, published by Charles Scribner and Sons in 1932, was Caldwell's third novel. It was inspired by the terrible poverty he witnessed as a young man growing up in the small east Georgia town of Wrens. His father, Ira Sylvester Caldwell, who was pastor of the local Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, was also an amateur sociologist and often took his son with him to observe some of the more destitute members of the rural community. Erskine Caldwell's sympathy for these people and his outrage at the conditions in which they lived were real, and his novel was meant to be a work of social protest. But he also refused to sentimentalize their poverty or to cast his characters as inherently noble in their sufferings, as so many other protest works did.
The novel's Lester family, headed by the shiftless patriarch Jeeter, both appall and intrigue readers with their gross sexuality, casual violence, selfishness, and overall lack of decency. Living as squatters on barren land that had once belonged to their more prosperous ancestors, the Lesters have come to represent in the American public's mind the degradation inherent in extreme poverty. That Caldwell also portrays them as often-comic figures further complicates the reader's response. Tobacco Road is a call to action, but it offers no easy answers and thus has generated intense debate both in and out of the South. Many southerners denounced the novel as exaggerated and needlessly cruel and even pornographic, an affront to the gentility of the region. Northern critics, however, tended to read the book as a serious indictment of a failed economic system in need of correction. Caldwell later explained that the book was not meant to represent the entire South, but for many this work confirmed demeaning southern stereotypes.
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Jeeter had lived and been tenant farmers of this land all his life, as was his father and his grandfather, who had started out growing tobacco. His father found the soil more suitable and prosperous for growing cotton. Jeeter barely squeezed out just enough dollars to survive each year growing cotton until the owner of the land gave up farming, himself, altogether and moved to the city. The Lesters were allowed to remain in their homes on the land rent free, but the loans for farming were cut off and repairs to the homes would be left up to the tenants, which the tenants didn't give much thought about.
This story is a crazy twist on some peoples reactions to the realities of life. But, the fact is, the basis of how they thought and behaved during those times, even the wasteful, mindless spending of some of the poorest of poors, I believe to be true. We see it even today...all the time, everywhere.
This novel shows, in an exaggerated way, of course, the degree Jeeter was willing to stoop for survival. It was always a selfish motive, even though it really was about money for food. He thought of himself first before the other family members. The problem was he was lazy, always talking the talk, and never took any action. This was the year he would burn the fields, rent a donkey and plow and plant seed-cotton and purchase the guano. But, year after year, all he did was sit on the porch and blame the rich man or God for his woes for not lending him the money. He was not flexible, and he was unwilling to change with the times. All of his children, except two, Dude and the hair-lipped Ellie Mae, had left home for the city to carve out livings for themselves.
In this twisted story, an older widowed preacher woman, Bessie, age 39, marries the 16 year old, Dude Lester. Dude readily agrees because Bessie's husband had left behind $800 in the bank, which she used to purchase a brand new car and dangled before him, even though her house was so dilapidated and leaking everywhere because the roof was caving in and they had no food and no money to even put oil or gas in the car to keep it running. No one sees anything unusual in this. Afterall, they all see they may get a little piece of the pie. The car was trashed within the first week. But hey, they were proud. It was still purchased brand new and still ran, and she had her Dude, who she was going to turn into a preacher man. (