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

The grotesque description of Warren's violence also takes on the aspect of Southern Gothic. Especially significant is the fact that the animals Warren kills are his brother's pet cats. In "Slavery and the Gothic Horror of Poe's 'The Black Cat,'" Leslie Ginsberg makes a compelling argument that Poe's short story is a very conscious comment on slavery, using familiar nineteenth-century imagery of animal cruelty. She refers to the "scene[s] of pet abuse so familiar to antebellum child-rearing guides" (106). She goes on to mention an episode from Catherine Maria Sedgwick's Home, in which a boy "[i]n a fit of anger [ . . . ] plunges his sister's kitten into a vat of hot water" (106). Ginsberg observes that such violent scenes had political implications; this violence confirmed, as "abolitionists argued, the intoxication of absolute power bred in the intemperate abuses for which slavery was infamous" (106).

Similarly, Guthrie's description of the brutalization of innocent cats is framed in language of "bad politics," Nora Guthrie's physical and emotional decline, maternal love, and Woody's evolving personal and political identity. The bad politics of Woody's father Charley are reflected in Warren's brutal abuse of "absolute power," just as slavery was represented in the pet mutilations of nineteenth-century southern literature.

Charley Guthrie, Woody's father, was very active in Oklahoma's Democratic party, and his "bad politics" are specifically southern. The increase of the Democratic party's power demonstrated the extent of the southern influence on Oklahoman identity. Danney Goble writes, "Oklahoma [joined] the ranks of the one-party 'Solid South'" (289). Before the killing of the cats, young Woody says, "[i]f every single [member of the family] would all git together an' get rid of them ol' mean, bad politics, they'd all feel lots better, an' wouldn't fight each other so much an' that'd make my mama feel better" (77). Warren's violent outburst represents an extension of the frustration and rage that Guthrie believed was killing his mother. And while this frustration has personal effects, it is political in origin.

In broader terms, violence perpetrated against animals in the context of class and power relationships is also a staple of the Old Southwestern sketch. Longstreet's "The Horse-Swap" describes a trade between a ring-tailed roarer called "The Yallow Blossom from Jasper" and a man named Peter Ketch. For most of the story, the two banter back and forth before closing the horse swap, each displaying his wit and ability to outsmart the other. Each man is clearly more interested in his reputation as a trader than in the actual value (or well-being) of the horses. Eventually the trade is sealed, and Yallow Blossom's horse, Bullet, is stripped of its blanket only to reveal the painful and grotesque injuries that have made the horse appear so lively. The narrator recalls in horror:

The removal of the blanket disclosed a sore on Bullet's back-bone that seemed to have defied all medical skill. It measured six full inches in length and four in breadth, and had as many features as Bullet had motions. My heart sickened at the sight; and I felt that the brute who had been riding him in that situation deserved the halter. (237)

While the narrator may be disgusted at such cruelty, he notes that among the gathered crowd, "[t]he prevailing feeling [ . . . ] was that of mirth" (237). As with the torture of pet cats in Guthrie's Bound for Glory, Sedgwick's Home, and Poe's "The Black Cat," cruelty toward animals is presented here as a reflection of human social relationships. While Longstreet allows his unnamed narrator to criticize such behavior, the author clearly wishes the reader to share in "[t]he prevailing feeling [ . . . ] of mirth." Guthrie, Sedgwick, and Poe offer their readers no such comfort.

Guthrie adapts the motifs of frontier humor, the tall tale, and Old Southwestern humor to suit his radical views regarding labor and his more mainstream patriotic views regarding the war. By becoming the familiar rough backwoods hero, Guthrie and his radical politics become as wholesome as Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, and Huck Finn. The traditions of the frontier and Old Southwest exploit difference, but Guthrie uses these same traditions to seek unity in his family, among workers, and between his socialist ideals and his unabashedly patriotic response to the war. The influence of the Southern Gothic, however, not only brings to the book the undeniable truth of violence and oppression but also allows Guthrie to document his political genesis.

Bound for Glory is a fascinating look at an America gripped by war, witnessed by an unlikely American hero: the socialist patriot, part Thomas Jefferson and part Eugene Debs. In Bound for Glory Guthrie, by then a resident of New York City, returned to his western and southern roots to create his paradoxical legend. Thus, Guthrie at once became and immortalized the "lonesome traveler [and] great historical bum" (Guthrie, "Biggest Thing") still revered and imitated today.

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