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Wendell BerryA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Water can be a source of life or a destructive force, and Jayber Crow experiences it as both at defining points in his life. Water, specifically in the form of the river, becomes a symbol of the passage of time and significant change in Jayber Crow. As a young child, Jayber watches the steamboats on the river with awe. With the emergence of more modern ways of transporting goods and people, the grand paddle boats fade away, and Jayber recognizes he has witnessed the end of the great age of steam boating and the end of an era in American history. “I knew this river first when I was a little boy, and I know it now when I am an old man once again living beside it—almost seventy years!—and always when I have watched it I have been entranced and mystified” (35). When the river swells into the Great Flood of 1937, Jayber witnesses a historical event but also follows its crested banks to find his way back home to start a new life. He finds Burley Coulter on the river, who leads him to his barbershop and becomes his lifelong friend. The river symbolizes a path back to his roots and a baptism into his calling. Named at birth for a man who finds himself submerged in the water of a whale’s belly, Jonah Jayber Crow’s pivotal life moments are drenched in water; the Kentucky River is his fount of redemption.
Time passes, and the river does not change, but water takes on a new significance as Jayber’s life shifts again. When the health inspector discovers Jayber’s lack of water source, he threatens to shutter the barbershop. Ironically, the absence of water forces Jayber to a crossroads of decision. Instead of bringing water into the barbershop, Jayber moves his entire life to the banks of an endless water source. At the end of his life, the river symbolizes a mirror or a crystal ball. In its changing face and shifting seasons, Jayber comes to a deeper understanding of his life and his faith. “I feel more religious, in fact, here beside this corrupt and holy stream” (336). In his last act of life, water becomes Jayber’s source of physical sustenance and spiritual enlightenment. He eats from its bounty of fish, bathes in its waters, and rests by its banks in peaceful contemplation. Just as Jayber’s life moves, the river flows unceasingly, causing calamity and peace, turbulence and placidity alike. Jayber relates the story of the river’s directive power in his own life, full of eddies and shoals, but equally replete with beauty and bounty.
Wendell Berry establishes Port William as a very specific place, but he also utilizes it to symbolize an idea. What he calls the “Port William membership” represents a specific way of life. In his fictional town, Berry canonizes a simple, yet meaningful existence where neighbors trade goods and services with each other instead of shopping at a supermarket. Farmers work in unison with the seasons and rhythms of nature as opposed to adopting the mass market agribusiness models. Life is lived humbly, and the farm, neighborhood, and community are the hope of the future: “After I got to Port William, I didn’t feel any longer that I needed to look around to see if there was someplace I would like better. I quit wondering what I was going to make of myself” (139). For Jayber, going home to Port William was the goal, the aspiration of his life and thus the small town is a place not to escape from but instead to root into and cultivate deep connections to the land and others.
Port William also symbolizes Jayber’s calling. As much as he is called to be a barber, he is called to be a member of this very specific place. Jayber uses his position as a barber to gather bits of information from everyone in town that fits together like a puzzle and paints a picture of what it means to be a citizen of Port William. It is a microcosm of the larger world: “I will have to share the fate of this place. Whatever happens to Port William must happen to me” (159). In a way, Jayber himself becomes Port William as he absorbs its memories, culture, and personalities to save and pass on to the next generation. His barbershop becomes a gathering place for the community to grow and connect, and this does not end when he leaves. In a symbolic moment, he takes the barber chair, a piece of Port William, with him to the river, and the barbering and community building continues. Berry solidifies the significance of Port William as a state of being more than just a geographic dot on the map. It lives in the minds and hearts of its citizens no matter where they are in place and time.
Forest and dark woods have often been a symbol of spiritual disorientation. The Puritans saw the forest as a mysterious forbidden place where evil lurked and dark magic abounded. After the Enlightenment and propagation of the Industrial Age, the woods became a place of escape from filthy, polluted, overcrowded cities. From a young age, Jayber Crow sees nature as a place of refuge and uses long walks among the trees to re-center himself amid a life of uncertainties and pain. Though Jayber does admit to being like Dante, lost in the “Dark Wood of Error,” physical wooded areas never vex or disturb him; they only bring him rest and contentment. Jayber roots himself and his barbershop in the center of town, which grows community and camaraderie: “I was what I was. ‘I will stand like a tree,’ I thought, ‘and be in myself as I am.’ And the things of Port William seemed to stand around me, in themselves as they were” (270). Jayber seeing himself as a tree conveys his devotion to becoming a pillar of the town, a center, and a root system from which members can derive sustenance and joy.
The importance of trees finds its epoch in Athey Keith’s Nest Egg. The hidden patch of land cradles monstrous trees that existed before Port William or even the United States was born. The Nest Egg symbolizes not only Athey’s legacy of conservation but also a respect for deep time and history. The Nest Egg becomes a sanctuary for Jayber in his later life and a spiritual marital bower for him and Mattie for well over a decade. Just as Port William cannot survive unchanged from the swift winds of modernism, the Nest Egg eventually falls as Troy’s last-ditch effort to save the farm and as a sacrifice on the altar of his pride. In the wake of its destruction, Jayber feels cut down as well, falling to the ground in grief. The death of the great trees symbolizes an epiphany for Jayber and compels him to act, making peace with his losses and going to Mattie before she too is gone: “Finally a man stands up alone, scoured and charred like a burnt tree, having lost everything and (at the cost only of its loss) found everything, and is ready to go” (369). Trees are a symbol of might, knowledge, and protection and, for Jayber Crow, serve as arbors of love and light.
By Wendell Berry