Tony Earley's Voice: A Writing Assignment
Now that we have read and chatted about Jim the Boy, “My Father’s Heart,” “Deer Season,” two reviews of Jim the Boy, and an interview with Tony Earley, it’s time to write. Using the above literature as well as class conversations and information on the class web site, compose a short essay (of no more than 500 words) in which you discuss one essential characteristic of Earley’s voice. You might consider style (sentence structure, diction, figurative language, imagery), structure, setting, tone, typical characters or persons, conflicts, themes, and the like. In your composition, you must show how that characteristic is revealed in the literature. For instance, if you decide his use of metaphor is essential, then you must show how Earley uses metaphor in his work.
Refer to "The Thirteen Commandments" for advice on writing about literature.
Click here to view the rubric for this assignment.
Remember: To be terrific, you must be specific!
Student Exemplars
"Tony Earley's Voice Through Metaphors"
"Lessons"
Tony Earley’s
Voice Through Metaphors
This first
composition is especially strong because it has a narrow focus (metaphor reveals
character), offers specific examples that are related (quotations from one
scene), explains the metaphors in those examples (by specifically addressing
what's implied about Jim and Cissy through language), and provides a smooth ride
from beginning to end.
In an interview with Hattie Fletcher, Tony Earley said, "I can’t write any piece, fiction or nonfiction, until I come up with a metaphor" (5). Not only do his metaphors help to create better images in the reader’s mind about scenes, but also about characters. In Jim the Boy are great examples that show how Tony Earley uses metaphors.
On only the second page of the novel, Jim walks into the kitchen where his mother is cooking. When she acknowledges Jim, his "heart r[i]se[s] up briefly, like a scrap of paper on a breath of wind, and then quickly settle[s] back to the ground" (8). This metaphor tells us something about Jim. It tells us that first of all there is not much to Jim’s heart, which is described as only a "scrap of paper" picked up by only a "breath of wind." It does not take a gust of wind to raise his heart, but a mere "breath" of wind. This metaphor tells us that Jim’s faint heart is easily moved, or he is easily affected. The fact that Jim’s heart "settle[s] quickly back to the ground" shows us that Jim’s feelings change often and quickly. His heart is only raised for a quick moment, and not any longer.
In the sentence followed by the sentence above, Tony Earley says that Jim’s "love for his mother [is] tethered by a sympathy Jim fe[e]l[s] knotted in the dark of his stomach" (8). This shows us that the love that Jim has for his mother is restricted by this sympathy that Jim feels for his mother that is tied up deep inside of him. This sympathy that Jim can not seem to untie, or figure out, is what is keeping him from loving his mother in a more open way. He feels so sorry for her because of the death of Jim’s father that he seems to feel more sympathy for his mother, instead of love. At the end of this same passage when Jim’s mother leans over to kiss him, what he senses is the smell of her cheeks being "as sweet and sad at once as the smell of freshly turned earth in the churchyard" (8). What this short statement shows us is how in the little things Jim’s mother does, such as a quick kiss, Jim can sense her grief, and he sympathizes for her. Tony Earley describes this grief as being "pulled behind her [Jim’s mother] like a plow" (8).
The metaphors that Tony Earley uses help the reader understand what he is visualizing. Not only do they illustrate an image in the reader’s mind when he describes things such as elements of nature, but they also help the reader understand characters like Jim and his mother better, by comparing aspects of these characters to things that the reader can understand and visualize. His use of metaphors is one aspect of his voice as a writer that anyone would notice when reading one of his works.
One thing that best defines Tony Earley’s writing is his ability to intertwine many lessons through his works. One lesson of Jim the Boy and "My Father’s Heart" is the great and often negative influence that parents can have on their children.
In Jim the Boy, Jim Glass’ mother, Cissy, has a very hard time dealing with her feelings about the early death of her husband. This, in turn, causes Jim to be confused about what is and isn’t acceptable in terms of expressing himself. When the story first begins, Tony Earley portrays Jim as a happy boy who has just decided he is now a man because it is the morning of his tenth birthday. However, when he goes from his room into the kitchen, he sees his mother wearing her mother’s "long clothes" (8), which tells him that the loss of her late husband is hitting her extra hard that day.
Earley then describes the feeling always inside her: "she pulled the heaviness that had once been grief behind her like a plow" (8). The fact that Cissy drags this heaviness behind her tells the reader that she doesn’t confront or express her feelings. The result of this behavior on her part is shown through Jim when he realizes that he isn’t going to be able to finish hoeing the row of corn he started on. He feels like he wants to cry, but as Earley states, "Jim felt like crying made him angry" (16). By watching his mother hold all of her sadness and anger inside, Jim thinks that it is not acceptable to show what he is feeling or to even feel sadness at all.
"My Father’s Heart" is another one of Earley’s writings in which he shows some of the harmful ways parents can influence their children. One of these ways is when Jim’s mother thinks she is helping him to stay on the right track, but as he looks back at the way she intimidated him, he recalls how this pressure just hurt him more. When Jim, as an older man, talks about how his mother would scold him for getting B’s and tell him it was the Glass in him trying to turn him into a bootlegger, it made him think that he was destined to be a bootlegger before he even knew what a bootlegger was. In this way, Cissy Glass had her son so scared to become something terrible, that he figured that in the end he would end up a terrible person anyway, and she would hate him as much as his grandfather.
Also in "My Father’s Heart," Cissy Glass scares Jim without even meaning to. When he would do something good she would tell him he had his father’s heart in way that se meant that he was a good person just like his father, but to Jim, as a kid, he thought it meant he had a weak heart like his father. This caused him to lay awake at night terrified that he could die at any second. One last thing that Cissy Glass does that affects Jim throughout his life is that whenever she tells him stories about his father, she changes little elements, such as whether his father was wearing a coat or not. This leads Jim to wonder what else about his father his mother has made up over the years.
In Tony Earley’s writing he teaches to always be careful of what you say because you never know how someone will interpret it. Especially be careful with how you treat your children because it could have a negative influence on them for the rest of their life.