Here are the page numbers for our upcoming reading of God's Little Acre.
February 1 Erskine Caldwell, God’s Little Acre (1-54)
February 3 God’s Little Acre (55-107)
February 5 God’s Little Acre (107-157)
February 8 God’s Little Acre (157-end)
And check out the trailer for the movie version on YouTube here.
I was supposed to post a comment on Sunday night commenting on the last section of As I Lay Dying. I failed to do so, so here's my blog on the first section of God's Little Acre.
ReplyDeleteI think it's despicable how the men treat the women, and it gets worse and worse as the novel continues, yet a part of me is inclined to empathize with them. YIKES! What is Caldwell doing to me!?
I find myself wondering if the men treat the women this way to have some sense of power in a world where they've lost it all. If they can't be working in the mills or farming the land or finding the "lode" then they're going to exert power where they can. We see that sort of power with Ty Ty, Will, and Jim Leslie (sorry, that's a little ahead of the first section), all of them representing the three main financial classes (lower, middle, and rich, respectively). All of them are struggling financially, and all of them treat the women horribly, whether it's through embarrassment, humiliation, mortification, or physical abuse.
I wonder, is Caldwell trying to defend this behavior? Or, is it just a sign or symptom of the times?
-Rachel Hancock
I think we were supposed to start commenting on God's Little Acre..so here is mine for the first section that we had to read for Wednesday! First of all this book is a lot easier to read than As I Lay Dying because the word choice isn't so obscure. It is easier to figure out what is going on in the text.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing that struck me was in the very first chapter, the way that Ty Ty has been eagerly searching for gold on his land for fifteen years. This desire for wealth has literally taken over his life; "Year by year the area of cultivated land had diminished as the big holes in the ground increased" (9). This sentence really shows the reader the intensity of Ty Ty's goal to strike rich. The other intrigueing this is how the relate an albino person, who is all white, to being a source of luck. Even though the dialogue is hilarious when they refer to roping the albino in order his help with the holes, I feel guilty when laughing out loud because of the cruelty that people can put upon other humans. Even though they associate the albino as good luck because of his "all-whiteness" (7), they still resolve to catch the albino in a way that you would catch an animal. This idea that being white is good and lucky is alright started in this work. Along the same lines, the way Ty Ty does not care that the blackies lack of food aggravates me. The mistreatment of blackies is already seen right off the bat. Ty Ty, filled with greed, "ain't got the time to be worrying about darkies eating" (8). Ty Ty has better things to do,,,,,such as roping an albino for good luck. Even though humorous, the book addresses social issues right at the start.
I have found the first part of this book to be very amusing. Ty Ty's constant insistence on "being scientific" are horribly at odds with his decision to just drop what he is doing to go catch an albino, which he seemingly does because of a suggestion from the sheriff, Pluto. He also seems to make rash decision based on arbitrary feelings, such as being sure of the albino's ability to somehow locate gold.
ReplyDeleteHis character also delves deeply into hypocrisy, in reference to God's Little Acre. He constantly moves this designation around to avoid giving to the church, which is why he founded the acre in the first place. And I have to agree, the way the men talk about and treat the women, is at best disrespectful.
What struck me the most about this book other than what everyone else has mentioned (the father's hypocrisy & utter absurd statements and the view of women) would have to be how grounded in the times this book is. Unlike _As I Lay Dying_ where language needed to parsed out, the characters of _God's Little Acre_ are set firmly in the Great Depression. From the get go with the barren, dusty fields and crazed obsession with finding wealth, the reader immediately knows the context of the work and what is driving these people. Pluto is only running for sheriff because there are no other jobs and apparently only 20 other people are running against him for the same reasons.
ReplyDeleteThe treatment of the African Americans is appalling and infuriating. Obviously they are suffering the most and exemplify the plight of the sharecropper of the time. Later on Will and other mill workers are on strike against a wage decrease, refusing to settle. He describes food relief in the form of flour and yeast being handed out. He says that yeast can be added to water and drank to fill a person up. It just shows how dire things were for people and how little they truly how.
First, I'm sorry for posting this after the deadline. Hopefully you all will check this before class tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteBesides reminding me of the book "Holes", the hole-digging in this book is probably what intrigued me the most through the first section. Specifically the title plot of land, which Ty Ty seems to use as permanent redemption for his sins. Because he gives what he reaps from one acre of his land to the local church, he is able to classify himself a "religious man" (13). His reasoning and general attitude actually remind me quite a bit of Anse, but that is probably just an As I Lay Dying hangover.
Eventually Ty Ty moves it to places that he is not even plowing just so that they can dig for gold in the spot that God's Little Acre used to exist. But defiantly, and quite comically, he will not do away with the concept because it is God's, and he can't take away what is God's. I though this was extremely interesting and pretty telling of the demise of society as a result of the lack of money during this period. But what do I know.
Though the treatment of women is pretty terrible, you can't really call the females in the book passive or weak. Both Darling Jill and Griselda are strong-willed women that don't mind standing up to men one bit. In fact, the character of Darling Jill may be the most interesting to me thus far. Well that's all I've got for this round.
- Daniel Ford
The strangest part of the book to me thus far are the widely varying degrees of sexuality among the characters. The way Pa talks about Griselda time and time again, the open manner in which Will talks about Dave wanting to get after Darling Jill, and Will's own affairs startled me at first. However, I was able to move past this openness about sexual matters, with the belief that was simply the picture Caldwell wanted to paint for us.
ReplyDeleteBut when you counter this attitude with Pluto's commitment and genuine love for Darling Jill and Buck and Shaw's seeming piety, it becomes really confusing. I'm interested to see where Caldwell takes us. I can't really seem to believe that sexual matters were as open as he portrays them, so I'm curious to see how this continues.
-- David Koehler
What has really stuck out to me thus far in the book is the odd mix of humor with sad (and often shocking) situations. We talked in class today about how the book invokes a strange combination of laughter and pity in us as readers. What is really strange to me though is the way the characters react with laughter and jokes to situations that would normally not be considered humorous.
ReplyDeleteThe scene that best depicts this is when Rosamond walks in on Will and Darling Jill and begins attacking them with her hairbrush (58-61). Granted this is humorous for the reader because of the way Caldwell describes it. But, what is very strange to me is how humorous the characters find the situation. Darling Jill initially bursts out laughing until the painful blisters cause her laughter to change to tears. She starts laughing again though when Rosamond admonishes Will and compares the current situation to Will finding her with Pluto. When Darling Jill makes a joke about Pluto’s belly, Rosamond “choked back a smile.” Rosamond just walked in on her husband and sister completely naked in bed together. If I was her, I seriously doubt I would have to try not to smile, not even upon hearing such a clever joke about the size of Pluto’s belly. A couple of pages later, a neighbor witnesses Will running naked down the street after gun shots have been fired. Is she shocked or concerned? No, she is laughing and can’t wait to tell her husband so he can have a good laugh as well.
The characters’ bizarre reactions certainly make the book more entertaining. Without the insertion of humor, situations such as the one described above would be much more painful to read. As it is, these situations are comical. But, the comic nature of the characters makes them a bit unbelievable to me. Maybe the characters do not know how else to respond but with laughter. I’m not sure what I make of this. Perhaps others can give me some insight.
Laura, actually, I agree with you about the unrealistic nature of the characters. It's been my view from very early on that the characters are extraordinarily static. Maybe I've been taking the book too seriously, but I've found the general lack of any genuine character development to be more frustrating than humorous.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, on to the reading at hand, pages 107-157. I think there's a correlation between the prostitute(s) in Augusta with Ty-Ty's treatment of the women in the family. In chapter 11 we see a prostitute goading and chiding Ty-Ty about coming up and having sex with her for money. In chapter 12, Ty-Ty uses Griselda as leverage in bargaining with Jim Leslie, which direclty results in Griselda being attacked and, presumably, almost raped by Jim Leslie. This coincides with something someone said about how, very early on in the book, Ty-Ty uses Darling Jill in hopes of getting work out of Pluto. At the end of chapter 12, Ty-Ty watches Griselda trying to fix her torn dress, as he "clutched more tightly in his moist palm the roll of three hundred dollars Jim Leslie had let him have." For Ty-Ty, sex a commodity to be bought, sold and traded.
"nevertossadwarf" is me. For some reason my real name didn't show on my comments, even though I'm logged in. Weird.
ReplyDelete-Josh K.
First of all, I think I like God's Little Acre much more than As I Lay Dying. It's simpler (obviously) and more entertaining.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I think I'd like to talk about the women in the novel, because thus far, I don't understand a single one of them with the exception of Griselda. Darling Jill went from being a hilarious, outrageous character to someone that's impossible for me to relate to in the scene starting on Chapter VI, page 55. It's impossible for me to understand the sudden change in her behavior. In the chapter prior, she finds Rosamond crying and acts very protective of her sister, flying towards her and saying "What did Will do to you? Where is he?" But less than 24 hours later, she's sleeping with Rosamond's husband! It makes it appear as though she has no love for her sister, and made me view her as very fake and, well, just kind of a bad person.
What shocked me more than that, though, was Rosamond's response to it. She runs Will out of the house after shooting at him (page 60), but then she goes over to Darling Jill, the woman who seduced her husband, and comforts her. I don't understand that behavior, and I'm really hoping that Caldwell will shed some light on the relationship between these two sisters soon, because I just don't get it.
It's not my day to post, but I just have to say (re: Laura's post)that if I walked in on my sister and husband, I most certainly would NOT laugh, but if I saw my neighbor running naked down the street, I most certainly WOULD laugh.
ReplyDeleteAlso, laughter in a tense situation is pretty normal. Every time I hear bad news, I suppress a nervous smile.