At times laugh-out-loud, slap your knee hilarious, and at times truly heart-breaking. Of course we're dealing with depression-era poverty, so it shouldn't all be a jolly good time. Caldwell's witty cast of characters allows for this unique experience of laughing until you cry and crying because you laugh. Not surprising that the stage adaptation was such a hit. Although it does surprise me that as recently as 2011 it's the the second-longest running non-musical ever on Broadway. I have underlined what I question. Does poverty do that to the extent that it is drawn in this book? I do not equate poverty with stupidity. The Lesters had seventeen kids. Five died. When the novel begins only two (Dude and Ellie May, an eighteen-year-old with an extremely ugly cleft lip) remain still at home with mom (Ada), dad (Jeeter) and grandma. The son Dude who is sixteen gets married to a women preacher named Bessie Rice. She is thirty-nine. She has a deformed face. These six individuals and a few others are drawn as imbeciles, as animals, as depraved, crude human beings. Religion is used as an excuse - for laziness, for doing nothing, for accepting fate. The only sign of hope are the ten children who have left. Little is known or said about them. The little that is said draws them too as unforgiving, cruel and uncompassionate individuals.

Most readers, and I include myself, struggle with Caldwell's depiction of the Lesters as being "ignorant, selfish, crude, sexually promiscuous, indecent, but also comic figures." Caldwell seems to simultaneously sympathize with his characters while at the same time maintaining a disdainful attitude toward them. The book is a call for social action to combat poverty, but one that provides no solutions. One of the few times in my time here on goodreads when I feel like writing: OMG. ... OMG, and really meaning it. Caldwell’s characterization of America’s lowest class may have been published in 1932, but its legacy (and their progeny) still abounds. U.S. pop culture is rife with representatives: Ernest T. Bass, Jethro Bodine, Junior Samples, Larry the Cable Guy… The Lester family is starving -- literally -- and the little they might acquire is consumed by a hierarchy, a survival of the fittest. Grandmother Lester knows she is expendable and keeps out of the way. For all the Lester females, silence is power to a certain extent. Except for the once-silent mother Ada and Bessie, who is not technically a Lester, I don't believe any of them speak; but they watch, and act when they can. The father Jeeter does not act, but he does talk, repeating himself all the time: No one is listening. Let's try this - just exactly what was Caldwell trying to say about these people? Did he love them or hate them? Was he making fun of their ignorance, or making excuses for it? And for that matter, were they really that ignorant and unfeeling, or had poverty and hunger just taken everything away from them? Lester Jeeter also had a love/hate relationship with God, blaming him for every bad thing that happened, apparently never hearing the adage "God helps those who help themselves." What was Caldwell trying to say there? Was he making fun of religion, or using it to justify poor people's reliance on it?In 1941, Caldwell reported from the USSR for Life magazine, CBS radio and the newspaper PM. [14] He wrote movie scripts for about five years. Caldwell wrote articles from Mexico and Czechoslovakia for the North American Newspaper Alliance. [14] Personal life [ edit ] The people from that part of Georgia, around Augusta, despise Caldwell for his portrayal of the locals. But Caldwell wasn't trying to be sensationalist or funny. He believed he was calling attention to the plight of these dirt poor tenant farmers during the Great Depression. What it does call attention to is ignorance, the effect of zero education, of inbreeding, of exploitation of the poor by...well, by everyone. Es un viaje a la miseria, la pobreza que amenaza a la familia de Lester Jeter y a la que temen porque les hará inferiores a las familias de negros que les rodean, que habían estado tradicionalmente subordinados a ellos. Heredero de una plantación de algodón que en tiempos fue próspera, ahora Lester y su mujer Ada son meros arrendatarios, aunque se agarran a la esperanza de pedir un crédito para volver a plantar una cosecha. Han tenido 17 hijos, de los cuales sólo quedan en casa Ellie May con su labio leporino y su cuerpo explosivo y Dude, que no tiene una inteligencia normal.

a b Trueheart, Charles (March 1, 1987). "Erskine Caldwell The Final Chapter". Washington Post . Retrieved October 1, 2022. a b c d McDowell, Edwin (April 13, 1987). "Erskine Caldwell, 83, Is Dead; Wrote Stark Novels Of South". The New York Times . Retrieved October 1, 2022. Novelist Erskine Caldwell's Ashes Rest in Ashland, Ore". Jefferson Public Radio. Archived from the original on May 24, 2013 . Retrieved March 14, 2012.Sumner Defeated in Fight on a Book: Magistrate Greenspan Finds Novel by Erskine Caldwell Is Not Obscene". The New York Times. May 24, 1933. p.19. El autor se centra en reflejar la ignorancia y el embrutecimiento, causa y consecuencia a la vez de la miseria, ya que todas las decisiones de todos los personajes, empezando por el pater familias Lester Jeter, son absurdas y erróneas. Son incapaces de analizar la realidad con sentido común y eso hace que nos distanciemos de ellos y los observemos como a los personajes de un guiñol. In Jeeter Lester’s case, the landowner, “Captain John,” got out of the farming business and left the community, and no one in town will lend Jeeter the money or supplies to lay in a fresh crop. Yet Jeeter insists that he should be able to farm in the old way, and not have to go work in a mill as many other farmers whom he knows have done: “The spring-time ain’t going to let you fool it by hiding away inside a durn cotton mill. It knows you got to stay on the land to feel good. That’s because humans made the mills. God made the land, but you don’t see Him building durn cotton mills. That’s how I know better than to go up there like the rest of them. I stay where God made a place for me” (p. 27).

They weren't much on education either with all, I believe, of the nine kids in the family dropping out of school and the girls, I think, marrying while in their mid to late teens. None ever divorced either. Caldwell, Virginia Moffett Fletcher". Social Networks and Archival Context . Retrieved October 2, 2022. Bauman, Sam (October 23, 1963). "I write for myself,' says Erskine Caldwell". Stars and Stripes . Retrieved October 1, 2022. Francis, Leila H. (2010). Erskine Caldwell: A Bibliography of Dissertations and Theses. CreateSpace. ISBN 9781453684368. The Lesters are struggling to get by on their plantation. The Great Depression has turned the American economy upside down, and it's corrupting the Lesters' lives. Unfortunately, they have turned to morally corrupt antics, highlighting the historic racism of Southerners during this time period, among other difficulties.Jeeter finds that he’s once again lived through the season for beginning spring planting without beginning to plant anything, and reflects sadly upon his lot: “He still could not understand why he had nothing, and would never have anything, and there was no one who knew and who could tell him. It was the unsolved mystery of his life” (p. 228). And one last attempt on his part to go through the motions of preparing the ground for spring planting results in one final tragedy for the Lester family. The one thing Jeeter and his wife, Ada, accept is death. They tell anyone who will listen what they want to wear new and stylish clothes when they’re “laid out.” Although it doesn't mention it, at the time when someone died they were placed in open wooden coffins in the main room of the house and relatives and friends came to pay their respects. In death Jeeter and Ada thought and wanted to look nice when they passed and were laid out. Caldwell, Erskine (16 May 2017). Three Novels: Tobacco Road, God's Little Acre, and Place Called Estherville. Open Road Media. ISBN 978-1-5040-4547-6– via google books.