Tobacco Road: Analysis of Setting
"Tobacco Road: Analysis of Setting" focuses on the stark and challenging environment surrounding Jeeter Lester's family in rural Georgia during a time of economic decline. Central to the narrative is the Lester farm, a once-promising tobacco estate that has deteriorated into a ramshackle three-room house with a failing agricultural landscape. The surrounding fields, now overgrown and unproductive, reflect Jeeter’s inability to cultivate the land effectively, leading him into sharecropping—a symbol of his declining fortunes. The setting is underscored by a historical tobacco road that once facilitated prosperity but now stands as a reminder of lost opportunities.
Nearby, the town of Fuller serves as a contrasting backdrop, showcasing a community that once provided support but has since abandoned Jeeter due to his growing debts. The journey to Augusta highlights the Lesters’ desperate attempts to improve their situation, ultimately revealing the harsh realities of their poverty as they encounter further disappointment. Overall, the settings in "Tobacco Road" encapsulate themes of despair, hopelessness, and the debilitating effects of economic strife, illustrating the broader struggles faced by many families in similar circumstances. This exploration of setting invites readers to reflect on the intersection of place and personal hardship in the context of American rural life.
Tobacco Road: Analysis of Setting
First published: 1932
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of work: 1920’s
Asterisk denotes entries on real places.
Places Discussed
Lester farm
Lester farm. Georgia home of Jeeter Lester’s family, near the town of Fuller. A three-room ramshackle house with a sagging porch and leaky roof stands in a grassless yard with a few chinaberry trees here and there. The surrounding cotton fields have not been cultivated for several years and are overgrown. Some seventy-five years before, it had been a promising tobacco farm owned by Jeeter’s grandfather. Running through the property is a tobacco road nearly fifteen miles long, once used to roll tobacco casks to the steamboats on the distant Savannah River.
Jeeter’s inability to produce a reasonable crop from the sandy, depleted soil has left him so heavily in debt that he has turned to sharecropping on what was once his family’s plantation. The soil resists Jeeter’s increasingly weak, though well-intentioned, efforts to grow a sustainable crop. Its infertility mirrors the impotence that gradually overtakes Jeeter and reduces him to little more than a shadow of a man. By the end of the novel, there remains even less of the farm after a fire destroys the old house, leaving only a “tall brick chimney . . . blackened and tomb-like.”
The utter, hopeless poverty so graphically depicted by the Lesters’ plight is representative of the rural squalor and degradation faced by many Americans living at the lowest levels of economic and moral debasement.
*Augusta
*Augusta. Georgia city about fifteen miles from the Lester farm. The Lesters go to Augusta naïvely hoping to sell some firewood. The trip, in a brand-new car purchased by Sister Bessie, the new wife of Jeeter’s sixteen-year-old son Dude, fails to raise any money to buy food or other necessities. They spend the night in a “hotel,” which resembles a brothel or hookers’ hotel, and Sister Bessie, in her ignorance, gets shunted about from room to room, encountering various unknown men waiting in beds. When they all head home the next day, they are none the wiser or richer for having had the experience. Furthermore, the load of wood and the lack of oil in the engine have ruined the new car.
Fuller
Fuller. Town about five miles from the Lester farm and about fifteen miles from Augusta. It is large enough to have a Ford car dealership, at least one church (Baptist), stores, and a courthouse, where Sister Bessie and Dude Lester obtain their marriage license.
The stores in Fuller had at one time extended credit to Jeeter because he raised a fair cotton crop each year. When his debts increased so much that he had no hope of paying them, his farm was bought by Captain John Harmon. Harmon allowed Jeeter to sharecrop for several unprofitable years but finally gave up, sold out, and moved to Augusta. The stores in Fuller, aware they can no longer expect to be paid, refuse Jeeter credit, thus cutting off his last source of sustenance.
Fuller’s bounty is close and yet completely out of Jeeter’s reach. Just as his wish for a decent crop is ongoing yet unattainable, so Fuller represents the relief that is impossible for Jeeter to obtain.
Bibliography
Arnold, Edwin T., ed. Erskine Caldwell Reconsidered. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1990. A series of essays about this generally underappreciated novelist dealing with both biographical and literary topics.
Cook, Sylvia Jenkins. Erskine Caldwell and the Fiction of Poverty: The Flesh and the Spirit. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991. This study focuses on the physical and spiritual effects of poverty on Caldwell’s characters. For all of their preoccupation with material reality, they aspire also to a higher purpose in life.
Devlin, James E. Erskine Caldwell. Boston: Twayne, 1984. An analysis of the novel’s themes and techniques. Identifies Caldwell as a naturalist and the Lesters as part of a subculture. Also tries to account for the novel’s seemingly contradictory combination of humor and serious social commentary.
Klevar, Harvey L. Erskine Caldwell: A Biography. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993. Covers the writing of the novel, Caldwell’s relationship with his publishers, and the influence of his father’s study of the white Southern poor for Eugenics magazine.
MacDonald, Scott, ed. Critical Essays on Erskine Caldwell. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1981. Includes introductions that Caldwell wrote for several of his novels, including Tobacco Road, as well as contemporary reviews and scholarly essays.