Tobacco Road (Identities and Issues in Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Erskine Caldwell
- First Published: 1932
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Family or family life
- Locales: Georgia
The Work
Tobacco Road is Erskine Caldwell’s tragicomic exposé of poverty and ignorance among a family of Georgia sharecroppers during the Depression. It establishes the paradox of Southern poor whites: They are lazy, amoral, shameless, and debased, but at the same time they are innocent, free, and uncontaminated by social hypocrisies. Jeeter Lester, the central character, derives an existential nobility from his unquestioning faith in God’s anticipated (but never realized) beneficence. As spring approaches, he lays plans to plow the fields, if by some miracle he can...
[The entire page is 649 words long]
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