Introduction | The Southwestern Hero | Big Jim | Complex Nostalgia| Southern Gothic Meets the Old Southwest
| Southern Writers Symposium

One of the most disturbing and formative of these scenes occurs while Guthrie is a small child visiting his grandmother's farm. At this point, his mother has begun exhibiting signs of the illness that will eventually take her life. Nora Guthrie suffered from Huntington's Disease, but when he wrote his book, Woody Guthrie did not know what killed his mother. Unfortunately, the illness was not very well understood, and her loss of control of her body and facial expression was interpreted by her family as a descent into madness. Various causes are offered for her supposed insanity, from the trauma of giving birth to Woody to the Guthries' economic troubles to "bad politics" (Guthrie, Bound 77). As a five-year-old child on his grandmother's farm, young Woody tries to make sense of all this while his uncles (who are only a few years older than himself) treat him as an unwelcome presence and omen of ill fortune.

In one of Bound for Glory's most violent episodes, young Woody is forced to watch as his uncle slaughters a group of kittens. Woody sneaks out with the kinder of his two uncles, eight-year-old Lawrence, as he visits Lawrence's cat, "old Mother Maltese and her new little bunch of kittens" (74). Watching the cat care for the kittens, Woody elicits information about his own mother, who has come to be considered "purty bad off" and "crazy" (76). Previously, Lawrence had made little secret of his dislike of Woody, but here away from the older and crueler Warren, the boys quietly observe and care for the cats. However, we are warned that "Warren kills all th' new little baby cats that gits bor'd on th' place" (77). As this remark comes soon after Woody's comment that "[his] mama got awful bad sick when [he] was borned" (76), there can be little doubt that we are witnessing the development of Woody Guthrie's identification with the weak and powerless of this world, or that the cats are in great danger.

In short order, Warren arrives and disrupts the tranquil scene. After shoving Lawrence and Woody aside, Warren discovers their secret and destroys the cotton seed box sheltering the family of cats:

Warren put his foot on my shoulder and give me [a] shove. I went about three feet. I tried to hold onto the box, but the whole works turned over. The old mama cat jumped out and made a circle around us, meowing first at Warren, and then at me and the little baby kittens [. . . ]. Warren kicked the loose cotton seed apart. "Just like tearin' up a bird's nest!" he said. He put the sharp toe of his shoe under the belly of the first little cat, and threw it up against the rock foundation. (80)

Warren's brutality, his bullying of Lawrence and Woody, and his comment about the bird nest inform the reader how casually and frequently Warren practices his violence. He quickly kills all of the helpless kittens. Guthrie vividly describes the scene:

He picked the second kitten up in the grip of his hand, and squeezed till his muscles bulged up. He swung the kitten around and around, something like a Ferris wheel, as fast as he could turn his arm, and the blood and entrails of the kitten splashed across the ground, and the side of the house. (80)

Warren then turns his attention to the mother cat, "[grabbing] the box and [splintering] it against the rocks and the mama cat's head" (80).

This scene is telling in several contexts. We have insight into the events that will eventually inform the peacemaking Woody of the "Little Jim" and "gang house" episodes. The reader also sees the growth of Woody Guthrie's very personal politics. This violent event is played against the backdrop of a conversation regarding the possible causes of his mother's decline. Amongst the candidates is Woody himself. Warren shouts, "Awwww. Whattaya know [ . . .]? You done run yore mama crazy just being born! [ . . .] You dam little insane-asylum baby!" (81). Afterwards, Woody watches the badly-beaten Mother Maltese gather her dead kittens:

I was listening to her moan and choke in the weeds, dragging her belly along the ground, with her two back legs limber behind her, pulling her body with her front feet, and throwing her head first to one side and then to the other. (81)

Watching, Woody asks, "Is that what crazy is?" (81). Is he wondering at the madness of the mother cat, spending her last strength to gather her dead kittens, paralleling his own mother's illness precipitated by caring for her child? Or is he wondering at the violence of his Uncle Warren?

Either answer is telling in the development of Woody's social consciousness. If he imagines himself as the cause of his mother's madness, he seems to wish to purge his guilt by serving other victims of violence and injustice. If he is commenting on his uncle, then we can read the question as a condemnation of the "bad politics" earlier blamed for his mother's poor health. Lawrence had previously defined politics from his youthful vantage point:

[Politics is] Just a good way to make some money. But you always have troubles. Have fights. Carry two guns ever' day. Yore dad likes lots of money [ . . . ]. Yore ma didn't like yore dad ta always be pokin' guns, shootin', fightin', an' so, well, she ust worried an' worried, till she got sick at it--an' that was when you was borned a baby not much bigger'n one of these here little cats [ . . . ]. (76)

Lawrence's comments identify Woody with the cats, remind us of the Old Southwestern sketch's focus on "fights [ . . . ] and electioneering" (xxiv), and personalize political violence, transforming the comic violence of the sketches to the social commentary of Bound for Glory.

Introduction | The Southwestern Hero | Big Jim | Complex Nostalgia| Southern Gothic Meets the Old Southwest
| Southern Writers Symposium

Published: 21 June 2004

© 2004 Edward A. Shannon and Southern Spaces