Setting as Character in Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell

This is a great book that I genuinely liked reading as part of my Goddard MFA program. In this bit of critical work I talk about the use of setting as character. This continues my on-going series of posting this work for your enjoyment.

Tobacco Road uses the setting of rural Georgia in the early 20th century as a third character to drive the actions and desperation of the characters.  The setting is an integral part of the context of the story. There many places on the planet but few places in the United States that this sort of story could take place but the setting of rural Georgia gives this story some much-needed context. The poverty, the economic issues, and the child marriage of Pearl would seem extreme in many other parts of the United States. The setting also reinforces the time of the early 20th century. The story would be horrific without its setting and its time. 

The setting allows the reader to accept so many parts of the story. The setting lends the story the proper container. For example, the fact that Ellie Mae has a cleft palate that remains unrepaired makes sense in the context of rural Georgia in the early 20th century. Even the title doesn’t work without it being set in the South where Tobacco is grown.  Everything happens on this sandy road. Most of the story takes place at the Lester’s place. 

The story lends much of its dramatic tension to the setting. The author uses the setting not only as backdrop but almost as a third character. The reason the Lester’s are poor is because they are trapped in grinding poverty in rural Georgia. Their position, relative to society, is both the cause of their poverty and part of their oppression. As a literary device, this creates a container for the author to discuss how this environment destroys people, as it ultimately destroys the Lesters. 

“I’d raise a crop of my own on this land if I could get somebody to sign my guano-notes, but won’t nobody do that for me, neither. That’s what I’m wanting to do powerful strong right now.” The Lesters are tied to the land. Lov mines what under that land. Their lives would be different if they were anywhere else. The Lesters refuse to leave the land. Jeeter has a reason not to leave; it is the only world he has ever known. Like many in this part of the country, he was born, grew up, and died in the same place. Despite their poverty, Jeeter looks down up on people who live in Augusta and work at the cotton mills. “It doesn’t look like everybody ought to be poverty-ridden just because they live on the land instead of going to the mills.” Even starvation, repeated financial setbacks, and the loss of all his children are not enough for him to leave the original road his grandfather put in for tobacco cultivation. Jeeter identifies with his setting in a way that the others do not. 

This story is as much about the people as it is the setting. That’s how the author uses the setting as a third character. The characters are victims of their environment. The land won’t even give them firewood that they can sell. Jeeter talks about putting in a crop because the smell of freshly turned soil brings out something in his soil, but his poor life decisions dictate that he can’t get a mule, seed cotton, or guano to plant the crop. But he also can’t leave the land, and this is the setup for the whole book. 

Even the Tobacco Road itself connects the characters. Lov must walk it to get food and must also use it as a pathway to visit his father-in-law to solve the “problem” with his wife. Lov didn’t even go that far to look for a wife, just a few miles up the road. The author doesn’t spend a lot of time on describing the place, and yet it seems like we know it intimately. We have just enough to glean the environment of the story. 

The description of the land is also quite poignant with such descriptive quotes, “Down in the thicket, hidden from the house and the road by the four-foot wall of brown broom-sedge, Jeeter’s conscience began to bother him.” Another description that works well is how ramshackle the house is due to poor maintenance and poor original construction. Dude is always ramming his worn baseball, and the house literally falls apart with every hit of the ball, “…more roof shingles fell off from the house each time Dude threw the flat baseball.” 

Not only do these quotes serve as a way to give a sense of place, but the author shows us the environment in which these people are forced, through fate, to live.  This is a harsh world, and the setting reinforces that harshness.  Ultimately, it’s the setting that brings the story to its conclusion. When a runaway fire kills Jetter and Ada Lester in their sleep, the author employs a powerful metaphor. The same environment that couldn’t provide a basic living for them killed them. 

The setting of Tobacco Road works as a third character that powers the complex plot of the story and provides the container and context for the terrible situation of all the characters.