The Trip to Bountiful (Masterplots II: Drama, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Horton Foote
- First Published: 1954
- Type of Plot: Domestic realism
- Time of Work: The early 1950’s
- Setting: Houston, Harrison, and Bountiful, Texas
- Principal Characters: Ludie Watts, Mrs. Watts, Jessie Mae, Thelma, The sheriff, Two Houston ticket men, Harrison ticket man
- Genres: Domestic realism, Drama
- Subjects: Family or family life, Suffering, Memory, Parents and children, Marriage, Rural or country life, City life, Home, Sacrifice, Old age or elderly people, Nostalgia, Aging, Self-revelations
- Locales: Houston, TX
The Play
The Trip to Bountiful opens in a neat and sparsely furnished three-room apartment in Houston, where Ludie Watts and his wife, Jessie Mae, are lying in their bed. Ludie quietly moves into the living room, where his mother is rocking in a chair and humming an old hymn. When she speaks to him, her first three words are “Don’t be afraid”—words that are in accord with the bracing message of the hymn of comfort.
As Ludie and his mother chat quietly in their country dialect, clamorous traffic noises from the urban street outside create a sense of...
[The entire page is 2465 words long]
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