AN ABSTRACT of the THESIS of Adriene Staggs
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AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Adriene Staggs for the Master of Arts in English presented on November 18, 20ll Title: Peculiar People and Plain Folk: Comparing the Regional Literatures of Appalachia and the Great Plains Abstract Approved:______________________________________________________________ Negative stereotypes about the Appalachian region and the Great Plains region abound, and while some truth may be garnished from these one-dimensional depictions, larger questions of culture, characteristics, and identity remain unanswered. One method of flushing out the realities of the Appalachian region and Great Plains region involves using literature as a window into the lifestyles and values of the areas‟ residents. Comparing the literature of Appalachia with that of the Great Plains reveals that both groups value independence, self-sufficiency, family, stories, songs, religion, the land, and work. These characteristics appear in several Appalachian and Great Plains novels, such as Robert Morgan‟s Gap Creek, Wright Morris‟s Plains Song for Female Voices, Denise Giardina‟s Storming Heaven, Elmer Kelton‟s The Day the Cowboys Quit, Fred Chappell‟s Farewell, I’m Bound to Leave You, and Robert Day‟s The Last Cattle Drive. Evaluating the similarities between the regional characteristics present in the novels helps to establish the contributions of the two regions to American identity, thereby contextualizing the importance of Appalachian and Great Plains literature. PECULIAR PEOPLE AND PLAIN FOLK: COMPARING THE LITERATURES OF APPALACHIA AND THE GREAT PLAINS ---------- A Thesis Presented to The Department of English, Modern Languages, and Journalism EMPORIA STATE UNIVERSITY ---------- In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts ---------- by Adriene Nichole Staggs Fall 2011 Approved by the Department Chair Committee Member Committee Member Committee Chair Dean of the Graduate School and Distance Education ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have the deepest appreciation for my thesis committee chair and members: Dr. Jim Hoy, Dr. Mel Storm, and Dr. Richard Keller. Your guidance and encouragement proved invaluable as I completed my thesis. I extend my deepest appreciation to all the dedicated professors who willingly shared their knowledge and insight with me as I completed my graduate coursework. I also want to thank Dr. Cathy Sepko, who first introduced me to the world of scholarship and Appalachian literature. Finally, I wholeheartedly acknowledge my family, friends, and colleagues for their unwavering support and encouragement. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................... iv INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 I. EXPLORING THE REGION: CHARACTERISTICS OF APPALACHIA AND THE GREAT PLAINS ............................................................................................... 10 II. LIVING IN THE REGION: MORGAN‟S GAP CREEK AND MORRIS‟S PLAINS SONG FOR FEMALE VOICES .................................................................................. 27 III. WORKING IN THE REGION: DENISE GIARDINA‟S STORMING HEAVEN AND ELMER KELTON‟S THE DAY THE COWBOYS QUIT ........................................... 45 IV. REMEMBERING IN THE REGION: FRED CHAPPELL‟S FAREWELL, I’M BOUND TO LEAVE YOU AND ROBERT DAY‟S THE LAST CATTLE DRIVE ..... 64 V. EVALUATING THE REGION: THE SIGNIFIGANCE OF APPALACHIAN AND GREAT PLAINS LITERATURE............................................................................... 85 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................... 91 iv INTRODUCTION People have pushed themselves to explore new frontiers throughout American history. Early settlers surveyed the backwoods of the Carolinas, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Later travelers crossed the Appalachian Mountains and moved into Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Pioneers propelled the expansion further west by searching for gold and land. They crossed the Rocky Mountains and reached Utah, Oregon, and California. Few people would argue that the idea of the frontier “has helped shape some distinctive aspects of American literature” (“Frontier”). Nonetheless, many people now view the Appalachian region and the Great Plains region, both once exciting frontiers, as places of economic depression and cultural emptiness. Negative stereotypes of Appalachia abound. Many individuals imagine an unkempt, poverty-stricken, poorly educated, barefoot man dressed in overalls and a ragged felt hat when they think about Appalachia. Oftentimes, the imagined Appalachian person may be shouldering a shotgun, drinking moonshine, and surrounded by hounds. Caricatures of these individuals are found in comics such as Snuffy Smith or television shows such as The Beverly Hillbillies. Similarly, perceptions of the Great Plains fall victim to stereotypes. When people think about the region‟s residents, they often recall the gun-slinging, horse-riding, Indian- fighting, cattle-herding, hard-drinking, gallant cowboy. Images of hard faced, gaunt, and work-worn farm families also define many people‟s perceptions of the area. Some people even call the area of the Great Plains a “flyover” region because they assume nothing there is worth stopping to see. 1 Both Appalachia and the Great Plains are steeped in myth and stereotype. Appalachian scholars, such as Jim Wayne Miller, Henry Shapiro, Loyal Jones, and Ron Eller, work to produce positive perceptions of Appalachia or emphasize the value of lifestyles that appear foreign to many. Walter Prescott Webb, Diane D. Quantic, Michael Johnson, and P. Jane Hafen toil to highlight and define the significant lifestyles of Great Plains residents. While these scholars provide valuable insight with their texts, they mainly concentrate on their respective regions. However, despite the differences in the two regions, these areas share many cultural commonalities. Establishing the cultural similarities of Appalachia and the Great Plains through literature provides an avenue for identifying and contextualizing the literature and the influence of the regions in the scope of the larger America. Understanding the nature of culture proves foundational in any attempt to discuss cultural similarities, regional literature, and its influence. The term “culture” holds many denotations and connotations. For the purposes of this discussion, “culture can be loosely summarized as the complex of values, customs, beliefs, and practices which constitute the way of life of a specific group” (Eagleton 34). Focusing on the literature of Appalachia and the Great Plains provides windows into the cultures of these areas. Regional literature has historically held a tenuous place in the spectrum of fictional works. Some individuals viewed this mode of writing as an “unfortunate” pastime of women who concentrated on their own small, local facilities (Inness and Royer 1). In contemporary studies, Herring proposes that people often equate regionalism with rural living; therefore, “regionalism – as a genre – becomes a discarded literary mode, the case study of an isolate, . Conflated with a quaint local color, 2 „regionalism‟ thus figures as an antiquated and effeminized (dainty, minute, skimpy) literary form” (Herring 3). These discouraging remarks reflect a notion that regional literature is poorly written. In large part, early regional literature employed stereotypes or ideal pictures of the places the authors wrote about. Katie Algeo‟s work with locals on local color finds that During the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, local-color writers and academics held a similar view of Appalachia. Not only did certain words and phrases recur in descriptions of the region, but the writers shared a common understanding of what made Appalachia different. The dogged persistence of Appalachian stereotypes grew out of repetition of imagery by popular and academic sources, with the academic voice lending authority to imaginative fictional renderings of place. (53) Cratis D. Williams explored later negative characterizations in his seminal work The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction (Olson “Literature” 166). One specific example of a twentieth-century one-dimensional rendering of Appalachian residents is Jack Weller‟s Yesterday’s People. Weller‟s 1965 publication calls mountaineers angry men who live “dull” lives (125, 123). Works from the plains suffered a similar fate. The people of the Great Plains were once said to live in “The Great American Desert.” Stereotypes equate the region‟s “open spaces with empty lives” (Quantic and Hafen xx). Kansas writer Denise Low laments that people discriminate against the Midwest because they believe Midwestern values are not worth investigating (69). Even the cowboy fiction that springs from the unique landscape of the plains suffers from a kind of second-class literary citizenship. 3 Western texts, first made popular by the adventures of famous cowboys in dime novels, have been sold as mere popular fiction well into the present. Authors incorrectly portray cowboys and rodeo riders as exaggerated caricatures of glamour in several works of popular fiction and movie depictions. Despite these poorly written and discouraging characterizations, regional literature has continued to