Tobacco Road

I had heard the adults make reference to it all my growing up years, and at age 64 decided to read it for myself. I don' t understand the hype, and found it too repetitious and bizarre. I was rather perturbed to find out (at the end of the book) the whole story only takes the span of one week. The only reason I am glad to have read it, is to be able to say, "Oh, I've read that."

I tried reading Tobacco Road several times in the past, but could never get past the first few pages. Now, I finally have read the whole thing, and I'm glad I did. This book could be tucked, whole, into the Canterbury Tales: it would fit very well there. If you don't read much, but thought the ATM machine theft sub-plot in the 2002 Ice Cube movie "Barbershop" was hysterical, this whole book is a story like that-- hairbrained ideas spinning horribly out of control. It's really funny on the top, but sad and inevitable underneath. Caldwell breaks with the silliness right in the middle of the book, inserting a chapter that explains the forces that have brought his characters to this particular brink. It's a bit of a change-up, so I suspect many readers skim over it. But the true story, the devastating cultural and economic shifts that occured as the region turned from tobacco to cotton and from agriculture to manufacture is a key part of understanding the South. And if you want to understand and feel hopeful about the future of the rural, agricultural, and disease-stricken Third World, in my opinion, you'd probably better work hard at understanding the emergence of this American region.

Erskine Caldwell's folk carnival Tobacco Road (1932) documents the last days in the lives of Jeeter and Ada Lester, poverty-stricken and permanently befuddled sharecroppers living in rural Georgia during the Great Depression. The tragic elements, initially almost undiscernable, strike sharply and rapidly in quick lunges before vanishing again beneath the book's brilliant comic surface. The novel has an archetypal framework: Patriarch Jeeter, dispossessed of his ancestral land, upon which nothing will now grow but "broom sedge and scrub oak," perpetually dreams of bringing his dead and depleted soil to life. While musing on his farm's infertility, and when not lusting after the women around him, Jeeter, a father of twelve, is preoccupied with ending his own ability to reproduce via self-castration. Like the Hanged Man of the Tarot, habitually procrastinating Jeeter is continually hamstrung and locked in the stupefying moment. Caldwell is particularly cruel in drawing his female characters: simple-minded and otherwise beautiful daughter Ellie May has a disfiguring harelip; man-crazy, self-appointed preacher Bessie has a good figure and a set of nostrils but no nose, the unnamed, unspeaking grandmother is starved by the other family members, who will no longer acknowledge her; struggling wife Ada, who has not always been faithful, dreams only of having a dress of correct length and current style to be buried in; and twelve year-old child bride Pearl has lost the will to speak and sleeps on the floor to avoid her adult husband's sexual advances. In contrast, Jeeter and handsome teenage son Dude are merely imbecilic, gullible, and grossly self-serving. All of the characters are God fearing and largely well-intentioned towards one another, though uneducated and of extremely limited consciousness: they are guiltless of malice, if not of responsibility. In a potentially offensive scene, newlyweds Dude and Bessie accidentally kill a black man, but think nothing of it. But this blank, spontaneous indifference to reality and the reality of other people is what makes the Tobacco Road hilariously funny. The ancient grandmother meets a painful and grueling death through another careless accident with the car; Jeeter discusses Ellie May's disfigurement without the slightest regard for her feelings; Bessie, perpetually in heat, nearly rapes unwilling, unresponsive, 16 year-old Dude; car salesmen gather to enthusiastically stare down Bessie's nostril holes and insult her; Jeeter attacks his son-in-law and steals the bag of turnips he walked has seven miles to obtain; Ellie May casually masturbates in the front yard; the whole family gathers, tribe-like, to watch Dude and Bessie make awkward love on their wedding night; the Lesters destroy a new automobile (symbol of the modern, productive, urbanized world they will never be a part of) within a few days due to recklessness and the family tradition of being unable to respect and maintain any material po

Written during the depression era, this southern classic uncovers the ugly side of southern culture steeped in poverty. Come along on Tobacco Road and view Jeeter Lester and his dysfunctional family. Jeeter, the patriarch of this poor excuse of humanity brings out the worst qualities that a man can possess. His ignorance, selfishness and stupidity are magnified to the highest degrees as he attempts to survive in a world that has long gone. Erskine Caldwell has introduced us to a life of absurdity in the backwoods of the south. His characters are stereotypical charactures of poor southern whites. Some of them are grotesque in their appearance, greedy, selfish and totally shiftless. As much as you would want to sympathize with them, you can't. They are people who won't take responsibility for themselves and will put the blame on others. Jeeter and his son Dude are great examples of this mentality. How then can this book be so good if it describes people so bad? In telling the story of Tobacco Road, we see another side of southern culture exposed. It is not pretty, genteel or noble. You see the ugly for what it is and affirm that this too is a part of life when people are reduced to extreme poverty. There is also humor in the story. The characters are not totally one dimensional but their naivite draws you to tears of laughter and maybe sorrow. Look into this world of southern culture where people cling to dreams long dead and allow themselves to remain stagnate on Tobacco Road. This is an excellent southern classic of a people long forgotten.