When the Light Gets Green (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Robert Penn Warren
- First Published: 1936
- Type of Plot: Regional
- Time of Work: About 1914
- Setting: A farm in the South
- Principal Characters: The unnamed narrator, Mr. Barden, Aunt Lucy, Uncle Kirby
- Genres: Short fiction, Regional fiction
- Subjects: Memory, Grandparents or grandchildren, Mortality
- Locales: South (U.S.)
The Story
The first-person narrator of this story—a young boy when its events take place—remembers his grandfather from an unspecified time after 1918 and the old man's death. The memories (his own and his grandfather's, both imperfectly understood) lend depth to the tale and at the same time determine its loose-jointedness.
The story begins appropriately with a recurrent but inaccurate memory—“My grandfather had a long white beard”—and the shock the boy used to feel when he came home from school and watched his grandfather trimming his beard before the...
[The entire page is 1835 words long]
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