Nathan Coulter by Wendell Berry
"Nathan Coulter" is the debut novel by Wendell Berry, presenting a coming-of-age story set in a Kentucky farming family during the early twentieth century. The narrative is told from the perspective of Nathan, who reflects on his experiences growing up on a tobacco farm near Port William, where work is labor-intensive and community bonds are tested. The novel explores the complexities of family dynamics, particularly focusing on Nathan's relationship with his father, Jarrat Coulter, a stern and driven patriarch whose unyielding work ethic leads to tension and estrangement within the family.
As Nathan and his older brother, Tom, navigate the harsh realities of farm life under their father's oppressive expectations, themes of masculinity, competition, and emotional isolation emerge. The contrasting character of Uncle Burley offers a gentler perspective, highlighting the nuances of familial love and the burdens of landownership. The narrative also confronts the darker aspects of agrarian life, including violence toward animals and the land, reflecting a culture that prioritizes domination over stewardship. While the original version of the novel traced Nathan's journey into adulthood and farming, the 1985 edition concludes with the death of Nathan's grandfather, leaving readers with a sense of unresolved tension and the hope for reconciliation between Nathan and Jarrat. "Nathan Coulter" ultimately serves as a poignant exploration of growth, family, and the struggle to connect with both land and loved ones in a competitive world.
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Nathan Coulter by Wendell Berry
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1960 (revised, 1985)
Type of work: Novel
The Work
Berry’s first novel, Nathan Coulter, is a spare, lean Bildungsroman that traces the development of the young protagonist, Nathan, as he grows from childhood to adulthood in a Kentucky farming family. Narrated by Nathan in the first-person voice, the novel recounts the working lives of the Coulters, who raise tobacco on a hill farm outside Port William. The action is set in the early part of the twentieth century, when the farm work was done by hand and with mules. Each person’s value was known by his labor. Nathan and his older brother, Tom, are slowly initiated into this work of farming. The novel re-creates the mythos of a pre-World War II farming community.
Nathan Coulter is the story of a male-dominated family, of a father who drives himself and his sons too hard in a continual struggle to force his farm to yield. Jarrat Coulter is competitive and driven, as was his father, and he tries to instill in his sons the same stern discipline of work. Unfortunately for him (and for them), there is no joy in his labor or his land, nor any real nurturing for his sons or his farm.
Jarrat unconsciously blames his sons for their mother’s death. He leaves them in the care of their grandparents and withdraws into sullen resentment. This resentment of his children culminates in a terrible fight with his older son, Tom, during the tobacco harvest, after he has driven his help beyond endurance. Beaten and humiliated, Tom leaves home, and Nathan is left in the care of his Uncle Burley, who has refused the burden of landownership. Burley is virtually the only kind and humane figure in this bleak novel.
In his portrait of Jarrat Coulter, Berry reveals the limitations of this harsh work ethic. Jarrat has attempted to dominate both his land and his family, to the detriment of both, without any compassionate attachment to either. In his “severe and isolated manhood,” he has closed himself off from healing relationships with his sons or his land. When the break comes with his children, it is complete. Jarrat’s brother Burley, on the other hand, lacks the ambition to farm, preferring instead to hunt and fish when he is not working for others. Burley has a gentler nature, however; each brother has something that the other lacks, and each is, by himself, incomplete.
There is much cruelty in this novel—much agrarian violence—toward men, animals, and the land. The two boys blow up a friend’s pet crow with a dynamite cap and fuse, Uncle Burley shoots the heads off live ducks at a carnival, fish are blown out of the river with a stick of dynamite, and Burley’s hunting dogs tear apart a live raccoon. This cruelty seems to emerge from a masculine agrarian culture that is bent on dominating the land rather than living within its limits. Women are scarcely mentioned in the novel except as background figures, and there are few community customs or celebrations to soften this harsh frontier ethic.
Berry writes about the succession of generations on the land, but the Coulters are too competitive to work the same land, so Jarrat buys the farm adjoining his father’s land. In the original 1960 version of the novel, Berry traced Nathan’s maturation until he starts to farm himself. In the condensed version of the novel, published in 1985, he cut the work considerably, ending it with the death of Nathan’s grandfather after the fall tobacco harvest. Unable to live with his father, Nathan’s older brother, Tom, has already left to farm elsewhere, and the novel ends with the hope that Nathan and his father will eventually be reconciled.
Bibliography
Cornell, Robert. “The Country of Marriage: Wendell Berry’s Personal Political Vision.” Southern Literary Review 16 (Fall, 1983): 59-70.
Ditsky, John. “Wendell Berry: Homage to the Apple Tree.” Modern Poetry Studies 2, no. 1 (1971): 7-15.
Freyfogle, Eric. “The Dilemma of Wendell Berry.” University of Illinois Law Review 1994 (2): 363-385.
Hass, Robert. “Wendell Berry: Finding the Land.” Modern Poetry Studies 2, no. 1 (1971): 16-38.
Hicks, Jack. “Wendell Berry’s Husband to the World: A Place on Earth.” American Literature 51 (May, 1979): 238-254.
Merchant, Paul, ed. Wendell Berry. Lewiston, Idaho: Confluence Press, 1991.
Morgan, Speer. “Wendell Berry: A Fatal Singing.” Southern Review 10 (October, 1974): 865-877.
Nibbelink, Herman. “Thoreau and Wendell Berry: Bachelor and Husband of Nature.” The South Atlantic Quarterly 84 (Spring, 1985): 127-140.
Pevear, Richard. “On the Prose of Wendell Berry.” Hudson Review 35 (Summer, 1982): 341-347.
Smith, Kimberly K. Wendell Berry and the Agrarian Tradition: A Common Grace. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003.
Smith, Kimberly K. “Wendell Berry’s Feminist Agrarianism.” Women’s Studies 30 (2001): 623-646.