Jayber Crow

“Port William repaid watching. I was always on the lookout for what could be revealed. Sometimes nothing would be, but sometimes I beheld astonishing sights.”

Narrator Jayber Crow becomes an important lens through which the reader sees the town and its people. Jayber lives a quiet, humble life, never asking too much of those around him. However, he takes immense joy in watching his townsfolk go about their lives. This quote exemplifies the theme of how an ordinary life can still be extraordinary.

“But to me, then, that dead and shattered landscape looked only as it seemed it ought to look after the death of my parents and the loss of our old life at Goforth.”

Jonah finds the riverbank completely ravaged after the historic ice storm. He compares it to photos he saw displaying the horrors of World War I; however, the destruction better parallels that of his personal life. His parents both die in the flu pandemic of 1918 leaving him an orphan. Here the author makes a brief mention of two major world events that have a significant impact on one person.

“Questions all of a sudden were clanging in my mind like Edgar Allan Poe’s brazen alarum bells.”

J. is having an existential crisis as he tries to justify staying in college to be a preacher when he does not accept the whole of the Bible as truth. The author uses an allusion to “The Bells” a poem by Edgar Allan Poe to exemplify J’s mental stress. In the poem, the narrator is tormented by the ringing of bells, signifying some impending, unnamed doom.

“It was preparing people from the world of the past for the world of the future, and what was missing was the world of the present, where everybody was living its small, short, surprising, miserable, wonderful, blessed, damaged, only life.”

J. is making progress in his life but still does not understand the need for formal education. He feels that universities spend too much time focusing on the study of the past or preparing students for future employment. Instead, he sees value in being completely present in the here and now. A person can find joy and fulfillment in a simple life they have chosen for themselves, not mapped out by an institution or governing body. 

“And that day two men who knew who and where I had come from and had looked at me face-on, as I had not been looked at since I was a child.”

After spending a decade away from his home and without a name, Jonah Crow returns to Port William and serendipitously encounters Burley Coulter, a man who will become his mentor and friend. Jonah has searched for meaning in education and religion, but in this small moment, he feels like he has finally found where he belongs. He does not need a degree or title, just a place to call his own and a community that loves him just as he is.

“The barber lived on what would nowadays be called a ‘renewable resource’ and so would never be out of work.”

The author injects humor through Jayber’s view of himself as the town barber. He compares being a barber to farming. As long as people grow hair, he will have to “harvest” it. Though the comparison is humorous, it carries a certain weight. Jayber worried about being a failure or not making something of himself. He has found a vocation, however, that is vital to the Port William community.

“[T]he old broad speech of the place; they said ‘arhn’ and ‘fahr’ and ‘tard’ for ‘iron’ and ‘fire’ and ‘tired’ […] I loved to listen to them, for they spoke my native tongue.”

Old Southern American English consists of many varieties, one being the Appalachian dialect. This dialect is spoken by people residing in the east in areas near the Smoky Mountain range. The author employs the use of dialect to give a strong sense of place and time to the text. For Jayber, the irregular pronunciations sound like music to his ears, and it another part of Port William that makes it feel like home. 

“I can see how we grow up life crops of wheat and are harvested and carried away.”

The author uses figurative language in the form of a simile to illuminate the truth of the brevity of life. As Jayber is looking back on his life, he has the necessary perspective to understand how little time one is given on the earth. The meaning of the simile is deepened by the reference to agriculture and the seasonality of sowing and harvesting food. Humans are part of that circle of life as well.

“The dark human monstrous thing comes and tramples the little towns and never even knows their names. It would make Port William afraid to shed its blood and grieve its families and damage its hope.”

As news of war comes to Port William, Jayber worries about how it will affect the small town. He distrusts the government’s ability to protect the individual. Sending young men and women off to war to be slaughtered is the ultimate expression of the sacrifice of individuals for the good of the whole. The author personifies war as a monster, though human-like, lending an eerie tone to the description of what will happen to the people in the community as a result of losing their loved ones.

“I sat in the barber chair, which really was the most comfortable chair I had.”

Jayber struggles in his early life to find his identity. When the trade of barbering keeps finding him, he finally accepts it as his calling. As Burley is showing him the shop for the first time, he is instantly drawn to the old-fashioned barber chair. The chair becomes a symbol as it represents Jayber’s true identity as a member of the Port William community. In this scene, the chair takes on a larger significance as Jayber sits in the place his customers usually occupy. The chair transforms from a place to conduct business to a place where he listens to and comforts his friends as they grieve.

“He was doing what a lot of farmers say they want to do: he was improving his land; he was going to leave it better than he had found it.”

As much as Jayber loves Mattie Keith, he has even more respect and honor for her father Athey. Mr. Keith sees the land not as a source of profit but as something to be cherished and preserved. The type of farming he conducts is what is now known as regenerative. He rotates crops to preserve the integrity of the soil and does not over plant or use fertilizers. Jayber recognizes that Athey is a man from another time and the modern ways of life will soon overtake Athey’s time-worn methods.

“There are moments when the heart is generous, and then it knows that for better or worse our lives are woven together here, one with one another and with the place and all the living things.”

Jayber lives by the moral code that everyone is joined in a type of universal brotherhood as well as connected with the natural world. This transcendental philosophy has guided many movements throughout the 19th and 20th century where groups come together to live in utopian harmony. Though Jayber recognizes the shortcomings of the individual, he still believes in the power of people working and living together in harmony with the natural world striving for one common goal.

“Some such men walked a tightrope, balancing debt and equity, to a sort of desperate ‘success.’ Others swelled until they burst.”

Jayber spends considerable time in his narration laying out how he sees the ideal man. Athey Keith comes as close to perfect as he can see. Jayber loves him almost as much as he does Mattie. He respects the way Athey treats the land and the way he cares for humans. Troy Chatham is Athey’s opposite in every way. He is ambitious to a fault, a tragic hero waiting to happen. In Troy’s quest to be a self-made man using the land cultivated by someone else, he will destroy it all and those around him in the process.

“It seemed that my way in this world had all of a sudden opened up again (like a door? a wound?).”

An epiphany is a moment where a character experiences enlightenment and resolves to change their life moving forward. Jayber experiences many moments of epiphany in his life. The long walk home after the dance is a prolonged epiphany as he determines to live his life differently. He pledges his fealty to Mattie and commits to a life of celibacy. Though he will not be her legal husband, he will live his life in a way that honors her and in turn honors himself. In calling a door a potential wound, Jayber recognizes right decisions, though noble, can be painful.

“Instead of sitting out and talking from porch to porch on the summer evenings, the people sat inside in rooms filled with the flickering blue light of the greater world.”

The author uses many metaphors to mark the passage of time in the novel, such as seasons, hair growth, and shifts in technology. Jayber grieves the loss of connectivity to each other as people choose to connect to the larger world through television. He prefers to keep his world small, finding the entertainment from stories of old far better than what is offered on a television screen.

“[W]ho can show me how the world is improved by that community’s dying.”

The author places great significance on the value of community to its members and the larger world. Jayber resolves to make his life smaller by selling his car and simplifying his life to better serve those he loves. At the same time, the world is hurtling into the modern age, and small towns like Port William are suffering. Jayber sees no good coming from a world that does not preserve small-town life and all its eccentricities.

We are too tightly tangled together to be able to separate ourselves from one another either by good or by evil.”

In the wake of Jimmy Chatham’s death in the Vietnam War, Jayber is left unmoored by the senseless deaths of citizens. The anguish and frustration lead him to question why God would allow such evil. This leads him to an epiphany about God’s grace and the sacrifice of Christ. Jayber also sees how all humans are linked together by sin and suffering. This passage uses alliteration to emphasize the way humans are inextricably linked.

“And so I began what I suppose is my final passage of family life, which has not ended yet.”

The idea of found family has become a theme in Jayber’s life. After losing his biological family at an early age, he has depended on others to take him into their home and hearts despite no blood ties. Aunt Cordie and Uncle Othy did not hesitate to take him in after his parent’s sudden death. The Keiths welcome him into their home as they care for Athey in his final days. Burley has been Jayber’s best friend, and now he invites him into his home and family during his final years of life.

“Of course, I know well what it is to be in a boat in a fog.”

The river has become a symbol of Jayber’s life. It is often peaceful but also unpredictable. He can choose to get in the boat but often cannot see the end destination or anticipate what dangers might lie ahead. This uncertainty and lack of control once brought him anxiety, but in his older years, he has learned to accept it and even admire it. He is in awe of its complexity and changing face and submits to just be carried along in its power.

The Economy does not take people’s freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom.”

Since his time at The Good Shepherd orphanage, Jayber has despised systems and institutions of authority and power. He personifies the government as a monstrous entity called “The Economy” to emphasize its prioritization of impersonalized wealth building and lack of care for the individual. Now that he has built his haven by the river, Jayber sees even more the ills of industrialization on communities and individuals. It robs creativity, and free-thinking, and destroys the land.

“This is a book about Heaven. I know it now. It floats among us like a cloud and is the realest thing we know and the least to be captured, the least to be possessed by anybody for himself.”

The Nest Egg becomes like a bower, an Eden-like escape for Jayber and Mattie. In their time together, they can forget about all the grief and pain in the world. Jayber realizes that humans can glimpse Heaven on earth through the love of creation and other people. His love for Mattie has saved him.

“[W]here we love one another and die, where we must lose everything to know what we have had.”

At the end of his life, Jayber can see with clear eyes how it all works. He makes peace with all the suffering he has endured. As Mattie is dying, he comes to accept that the only way to truly enjoy life is to love someone but to know the truth that one day they will die. It is a painful sacrifice but worth the cost of loving.

But faith is not necessarily, or not soon, a resting place. Faith puts you out on a wide river in a little boat, in the fog, in the dark.”

Jayber has wrestled with his faith for his entire life. Living alongside the river has brought him finally to rest in his uncertainties. The author uses a metaphor comparing the river to a life of faith. He adds the element of weather to the image to illustrate the idea of surrendering to the mystery of what lies beyond what humans can see and understand. As fog can be disorienting and mysterious, so is a life dependent on faith in God often confounding and complex.