Blackberry Winter, Robert Penn Warren | Jonathan S. Cullick (essay date 2000)
Jonathan S. Cullick (essay date 2000)
SOURCE: Cullick, Jonathan S. “Return, Reconciliation, Redemption: Uses of the Past in Warren's Biographical Narratives.” In Making History: The Biographical Narratives of Robert Penn Warren, pp. 9-27. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.
[In the following excerpt, Cullick considers the theme of the Prodigal Son and the importance of the past in Warren's “Blackberry Winter.”]
An example of redemption through knowledge and confession is “Blackberry Winter,” a Prodigal Son story in which the narrator at age forty-four, revisits one day of his childhood to acknowledge his complicity in time. Seth observes that in childhood, time is not a pattern of separate moments but an atmosphere within which events emerge: “When you are nine years old, what you remember seems forever; for you remember everything and everything is important and stands big and full and fills up Time and is...
[The entire page is 1103 words long]
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