45 pages • 1 hour read
John GrishamA Painted House
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Class Consciousness in Rural Mid-century Arkansas
Content warning: This section quotes a racist epithet referring to the Mexican farm workers, and classist language.
From the outset of A Painted House, Grisham highlights the poverty faced not only by the Chandlers but by the farming community of Black Oak at large. Luke notes that “like most farmers, Pappy and my father carried debt from the previous year” (13). Even at the age of seven, Luke is intensely aware of the financial burdens his family faces; he knows the market value of a bale of cotton and how much cotton their 80-acre farm can produce. When he says that “Most farm kids could do the math” (13), he underscores the reality that his community’s fiscal strife is so prevalent and intense that it influences the way even the youngest members of society go about their daily lives.
Though Grisham makes clear that most of the characters in Black Oak are impoverished, Luke understands at the start of the novel that this poverty isn’t uniform from family to family. Luke is aware that the merchants in town make money more easily than the farmers do; he also knows that sharecroppers such as the Latchers struggle financially more than his family does. Luke also categorizes the Ozark people and Mexican people in this more impoverished class; he recognizes his own “haughtiness” when he first rides into the cotton fields on Pappy’s tractor. He “looked down at the crowded trailer, Mexicans on one side, Spruills on the other. At that moment I felt very privileged because I got to ride on the tractor, and the tractor belonged to us” (37). The “haughtiness” Luke feels here reflects Black Oak’s unique considerations in assigning social class. When Jake Sisco, a sharecropper, is murdered, one of the townspeople says, “Ain’t no murder. Good folks get murdered. White trash like the Siscos get killed” (85). Marginalized communities with fewer resources, such as the sharecroppers, Ozark people, and the Mexican migrant workers, are dehumanized by communities like Luke’s—farmers who believe that their state of poverty is temporary and that through hard work they’ll fix their financial troubles.
As Luke gets to know the Mexican workers and the Spruills, though, his sense of the rigidity of class boundaries is quickly upended. Upon arriving at the farm, Hank Spruill quickly critiques Luke for being “uppity,” and he names the unspoken class hierarchy that structures this farming society: “‘We’re just one notch about them wetbacks, ain’t we, boy? Just hired labor. Just a bunch of hillbillies who drink moonshine and marry our sisters. Ain’t that right, boy?” (61). Luke is unmoored by this line of questioning; Hank, in a confrontational tone, names many hill-people stereotypes that are created and disseminated by families such as his own. Luke has never been called “boy” before by someone he perceives to be from a lower social class, so his assumption that his family’s position protects him from this type of interaction is quickly dispelled. Hank’s assertion that his family has a painted house while Luke’s family doesn’t also begins to dissolve Luke’s understanding that class is tied to financial status. As explored in Symbols & Motifs, the symbol of the painted house represents material wealth that is initially unavailable to the Chandlers. At this stage of the narrative, Luke is unsure of how to process the knowledge that a family from a more impoverished class could have more material wealth than his own family.
By the end of the novel, Luke’s perception of the Spruills’ class standing—and his perception of what wealth entails—has shifted. As he watches the Spruills leave in the wake of Tally’s departure, Luke says, “I felt guilty about all the evil thoughts I’d held against them. And I felt like a thief because I knew the truth about Hank, and they didn’t” (314). Luke gains the power and initial resources to paint his family’s house only because of Trot Spruill; Trot’s generosity helps shift Luke’s idea of what it means to be wealthy. The painted house, rather than simply a status symbol, becomes a community-building project that unites the Chandlers, Spruills, and the Mexican workers. As Luke comes to understand the impact of Trot’s generosity, he perceives his treatment of the Spruills as theft. He has robbed them of the knowledge of what happened to their loved one to protect himself. The language of theft suggests that Luke now sees human/familial connection as a type of wealth.
Navigating Patriarchal Violence
Luke’s childhood is steeped in acts of violence perpetrated by both men and women. Luke knows that Pappy is spoiling for a fight though Pappy rarely gets the opportunity to act on this desire; he witnesses Hank bludgeon both Jerry Sisco and Samson; he later witnesses Cowboy’s murder of Hank; he endures a beating at the hands of the Latcher children, and then he watches Mrs. Latcher fashion a switch and beat her children “far past the point of punishment” (244). The prevalence of this violence, and the variety of scenarios in which violence seems to be the only available solution to a problem, paints Black Oak as a culture dominated by the patriarchal insistence on violence as the only respectable form of communication and the only acceptable way to end conflict. One of the novel’s more chilling examples of this violence comes after the visit from Stacey and Jimmy Dale that ends a rare moment of levity for the Chandlers—Luke’s invention of the “shitsnake” as a means of taunting Stacey. Though the Chandlers are amused by Luke’s antics, and agree with his motives, the scene transitions to Luke’s father punishing him by beating him with a belt. This need for punishment—even though the family agrees with Luke’s actions—demonstrates that the Chandler household is governed by intractable rules and social scripts. Any deviation from these rules must be addressed, and the only means of addressing such deviation is violence.
Hank Spruill enacts two of the novel’s most gruesome acts of violence—the murder of Jerry Sisco and the beating of Samson. Hank exists in a society that equates violence with masculinity and even consumes it as entertainment, but the excesses of Hank’s violence stretch even Black Oak’s acceptance of violence. Hank’s fight with Jerry initially begins as a form of entertainment and draws a crowd who want to see the almost pornographic spectacle of two lower-class men fighting. Hank, though, takes violence from a socially acceptable spectacle to horrific crime; the “mob” watching the fight flees as soon as the violence starts drawing blood. If Hank is the product of a society that values violence in resolving conflict, then Hank’s narrative arc raises the question of how members of this society cope with the inevitable escalation of violence and retribution that results from allowing violence to flourish. Grisham doesn’t offer easy answers, but he traces two potential responses through Luke’s and Cowboy’s plotlines. Cowboy responds to Hank’s violence with a further escalation of violence, but Cowboy’s actions come at great cost: If discovered, he would be run out of society and separated from those he most cares about. Luke and his parents trace a different trajectory: They choose to leave Black Oak altogether. Because Grisham ends the novel at the moment of Luke’s departure, it’s not clear whether Luke or Cowboy can escape the specter of patriarchal violence that marks Black Oak—all Luke can know with certainty is that it will define his childhood.
Emotional Burdens of Coming of Age
Secrets are a motif throughout the novel—specifically, the secrets that adults explicitly or implicitly ask Luke to keep from other adults. Sometimes, these are secrets such as Luke’s mother’s pregnancy, which she directly asks Luke to keep from Pappy and Gran. Other times, these are secrets that Luke imposes on himself—such as witnessing the Sisco murder or seeing Tally’s naked body—because he feels that telling adults would endanger either himself or the people he cares about. The fact that Luke is asked to/feels he must keep these secrets speaks to the nature of Luke’s system of familial support. Luke has no one in his life (other than the four adults he lives with) with whom he feels comfortable sharing the emotional pressures he experiences during this tumultuous autumn. The Chandlers are physically separated from the town by the stream and by distance, and this physical separation isolates Luke and limits the emotional support network he can access. This isolation eventually takes a physical toll on Luke; after witnessing Hank’s murder, Luke begins to express PTSD-like reactions to basic tasks, like peeling tomatoes.
Luke eventually learns to cope with the burden of these secrets by sharing them with the people in his support network. He chooses to tell Pappy the truth about Hank’s murder, and Pappy tells him that the two of them will keep the secret. Luke reflects that this “was a partnership I could trust. I did indeed feel better. I’d shared my secret with a friend who could certainly carry his portion of it” (364). Luke eventually learns to cope with the emotional burden of the secrets by sharing them, allowing people who care about him to carry the burden of knowledge. The fact that Luke describes this process of sharing as a “partnership” is also telling. In no other part of his life does Luke see himself as being a “partner” to his grandfather (or even his father); before this moment, he thinks of himself largely as one of Pappy’s workers. “Partnership” speaks to a more mature, more equitable way for Luke to think about his relationship with Pappy because it entails mutual responsibility. The fact that Luke can think of his secret-sharing as a “partnership” shows that he’s taking his first steps toward adulthood. The burden of secret knowledge has relieved him of childhood ignorance and pushed him into a different type of relationship with his elders.
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