All Over but the Shoutin'

Bragg’s mother is the dominant figure in his life. “The first memory I have is of a tall blond woman who drags a canvas sack along an undulating row of rust-colored ground, through a field that seems to reach into the back forty of forever. I remember the sound it makes as it slides between the chest-high stalks that are so deeply, darkly green they look almost black, and the smell of kicked up dust, and sweat” (23).

Momma’s reality is being married to an alcoholic, violent husband who often abandons her and her children. She lives most of the time as a single mother in severe poverty. She is, first and foremost, a survivor.

She is self-sacrificing, determined, strong, courageous, loyal, kind, and religious. “If we passed a store, she bought us Golden flake barbecue potato chips and Grapicolas while she pretended that ‘No, child, I ain’t hungry, I’ll just ask them if I can have some water’” (47).

Rick Bragg’s goal in life is to find a way to lift his mother out of poverty. He knew that his mother longed for a “normal” life that included a stable family, a home, and reasonable comfort and safety. “While my mother will stare you dead in the eye and say she never thought of herself as poor, do not believe for one second that she did not see the rest of the world, the better world, spinning around her, out of reach” (25).

Margaret Bragg is mythically strong, devoted, and brave. She is also a woman with a strong religious faith that supports her through hard times. She inspires loyalty and devotion in her children and is devoted to their welfare. Her boys come first, and she is ready and willing to sacrifice anything to care for them.

The reader follows the story of Rick Bragg’s success with much the same wish as he had. The reader wants Momma Bragg to get her dream house and live happily in her old age. It is very satisfying when Bragg wins the Pulitzer Prize and makes his mother proud. And even more satisfying when he finally does buy her that house.

Rick Bragg escapes the backwoods poverty and “white trash” environment in which he grew up. His two brothers never have that opportunity.

Sam, Rick’s older brother, takes on the responsibility of the oldest son. He is hardworking, decent, loyal, generous, strong, and family oriented. “Sam was the solid one, the one most like Momma, the one who washed cars for a quarter, toted wood for the heater and slopped the hog every morning before the school bus came through” (91).

In the following passages, Bragg offers us a clear description of Sam’s character: “My brother Sam grew up to be a good man. He works at the cotton mill in Jacksonville, unloading the big trucks outside that massive old red-brick building. It’s a good job, compared to the work he has done before. The pay isn’t a whole lot but it allows his family to have decent health insurance, and that eases his mind. It’s hard to put a price tag on peace of mind, he says, and that’s all he’s really working for” (169).

“Much of my young life he spent coming to rescue me, with his fists—on the playground—or just his hands...I would break down on the side of the road and...he always got me running again, or pulled me out of the ditch, or at least wrapped a chain around my bumper and towed me out of the embarrassment of the middle of the road” (170).

“All he demands is that once in a blue moon I will sit with him in the barn where he stores his pickup and bass boat and tell him where I’ve been, what I’ve seen” (171).

Sam doesn’t exactly thrive by remaining a poor working man in rural America. He does, however, cope with a challenging life in ways that give him some satisfaction. He is well liked in the community. He has a good family life. He is happy for his brother’s success. He is the kind of decent, caring brother that anyone would want.

Mark is a casualty of his traumatic childhood. Bragg tells us that “Mark would become, at such an early age, the wildly unpredictable one, the one most like our daddy, the one with mean and gentle streaks that seemed to blur and merge...Mark was always dissatisfied, restless, as if something was nibbling at him, inside. Even when he was still a little child he had rage in him” (91).

Mark is the one who inherits his father’s alcoholism. Bragg feels guilty for not having “seen the signs sooner that there was no peace in him at all. He had a souped-up Chevy Nova...and every time he took me for a ride he pushed it as hard as it would go without blowing up...there were always beer bottles in the back floorboard, always, and not three or four, but piles, and a six-pack of warm beer. He didn’t give a damn that it was warm. That should have told me a lot” (154).

Mark is a victim of the disease and eventually winds up in prison. This causes his mother intense fear and anxiety.

The most climactic scene in the Bragg family saga is the fight between Sam and Mark at their mother’s new house. Mark shows up drunk to visit his mother, and Sam is determined to keep any drunk, including his own brother, from violating his mother’s home.

Mark also loses his home in a fire. He is the brother who suffers most from growing up without a father. He does not have the talent or the coping skills of his older brothers. Poverty and drinking take over his life and drag him down.

The author’s maternal grandmother was christened Ava but was known by the nickname Abigail and referred to as grandmother Ab.

She was strong, hardworking, and self-sacrificing like her daughter—a good, decent, caring person—who deserved a better life that she got.

She also fit the stereotype of the family eccentric and made a strong impression on her grandson: “...like a lot of creative people, she was prone to brief periods of . . . well, she could go a little peculiar. When she got mad she could cuss the paint off the wall, cuss crows from the trees, cuss the lame straight and the wicked pure...when she got really wound up she could talk loud for ten twelve hours straight. My granddaddy would just bow his head and let it rain over him like hail, or flee” (32-33).

Bragg is very much aware of his grandmother’s more virtuous side at the time of her funeral. “I didn’t hear the words the preacher said over her, but I know exactly how it went. The preacher would assure those left behind that she was in a better place...Well, she is. A woman who pretends to forget to eat so that her children will have more, like she had, like my own mother had, doesn’t have to worry about getting in” (277).

Grandmother Ab was, in many ways, a victim of the social pattern of her time and place. “Like a lot of women in that time, she walked in the shadow of her man even as she kept him upright” (32). Her husband died too young at the age of fifty-one, and after that she did not have a provider or a protector and she was too old to do the fieldwork other poor women took on. That left her in a difficult situation for which there was no easy solution.