A Painted House

“As they cooked, I settled into my chair, ran my fingers across the damp, checkered oilcloth, and waited for my cup of coffee. It was the one vice my mother allowed me.”

Luke’s comment that his mother allows him “one vice”—a single cup of coffee—speaks to the level of control that the adults in Luke’s life have over him. He is allowed little freedom in his actions and belongings.

“My mother loved this little plot of soil because it was hers—no one else really wanted it. She treated it like a sanctuary.”

This observation about the “sanctuary” of Luke’s mother’s garden speaks to the challenges of being a married woman in 1950s rural Arkansas. Luke’s mother is allowed very few spaces in her life that are hers entirely—so she clings to and cherishes the one that she does have.

“Ricky had taught me a few cuss words. I usually practiced them in the woods by the river, then prayed for forgiveness as soon as I was done.”

Luke’s discussion of cuss words here speaks to one of the underlying tensions in his life: the need to abide by the religion in which he was raised and the desire to violate the many rules of that religion. Here, Luke begins to give a sense of just how pervasive religious guilt is in his life.

“He was only nineteen, an age that seemed both old and young to me.”

Luke’s observation that Ricky seems “both old and young” is a prime example of Luke’s maturity despite his youth. He’s able to hold contradictory thoughts in his head and express them succinctly.

“Little Chandler almost wet his pants.”

This brief shift into the third person after Hank tells Stick Powers that Luke was a witness to the fight serves a few purposes. First, Luke’s repeating Hank’s phrasing in his own voice has a comedic effect. This abrupt shift into the third person, though, also creates a sudden sense of narrative distance, mirroring the shock and distance Luke must feel as he realizes that all eyes are on him.

“Their clothes were so old and worn, they were embarrassed to go to town. And because they had no electricity they couldn’t listen to the Cardinals.”

Luke’s description of the Latcher household indicates that Luke already has a clear sense that different farming families live in different states of poverty. Notably, Luke measures his material wealth in terms of access to the Cardinals—this is a telling detail for his character, and it effectively shows the immaturity he sometimes exhibits.

“‘Put it down,’ Hank said. ‘Fight like a man.’”

Here, Hank insists that Cowboy drop his switchblade and fight with his fists. The phrase “fight like a man” speaks to the toxic masculinity that Hank embodies in this narrative. He only understands his masculinity as a function of violence.

“After a few minutes, Pappy and my father grew bored and left. I’m sure they were worrying about how an injured Mexican might affect production.”

Luke’s glib observation that Pappy and his father left because they were worried about production indicates both that Pappy and Luke’s father don’t value the Mexican workers as people as much as they value them as a source of labor. Luke’s tone in this passage indicates that he doesn’t share their values.

“We passed it around and read it again and again, then Gran placed it in a cigar box next to the radio. All of Ricky’s letters were there, and it was not uncommon to walk through the kitchen at night and catch Pappy or Gran rereading them.”

The number of times that Ricky’s letters are read, as well as the careful way the letters are stored, speaks to how intensely the family misses him. The ritualistic re-reading of the letters, though, also helps characterize this time as one in which there was not as much media to entertain or distract these characters. There is little else to read besides Ricky’s letters.

“We could blindside her, nail her with Christian goodness while her protectors were away. It was a brilliant plan.”

Luke’s sarcastic tone here as he describes his mother’s plans to drop off food to the Latchers while gathering information about Libby humorously pokes fun at his mother. The quip that “it was a brilliant plan” suggests that his mother is scheming to be the first one to get gossip about Libby’s pregnancy. The tongue-in-cheek use of “Christian goodness” here suggests that not all actions under the guise of neighborliness are necessarily selfless.

“A couple of years ago in Monette, a chain had snapped, and a little girl had been flung across the midway and into the side of a trailer. The next week the Slinger was in Black Oak, with new chains, and folks lined up to ride it.”

This shocking description of a child being thrown by a faulty machine at the carnival is followed by an even more shocking revelation—that the whole crowd lined up for the ride as soon as the mechanical issue was addressed. This anecdote speaks to the intensity of Black Oak’s enjoyment of the carnival, and their need to experience the fun the carnival brings because there is so little similar entertainment in their lives.

“I thought of Noah and his forty days of rain, and I waited for our little house to simply lift up and begin floating.”

This biblical allusion foreshadows the flooding that the Chandler farm will face at the end of the novel. The reference also helps demonstrate how deeply rooted Luke’s viewpoint is in the narrative and moral concerns of the Baptist faith.

“Ricky told me once in private that when he left the farm he might become a Catholic because they only met once a week.”

Luke may feel that his life is ruled by the teaching of his family’s Baptist church, but Ricky does not. This line shows that Luke is aware that not all of the adults in his life necessarily align with the traditional farming life that Pappy demands they adhere to. Like Luke’s mother, Ricky dreams of a life for himself that has other ambitions.

“Modern America was slowly invading rural Arkansas.”

Luke makes this observation after watching a baseball game on television for the first time. His phrasing here suggests that, in his view, Black Oak both exists outside of “modernity” and that Black Oak won’t be able to escape the encroachment of technological/societal advancement. Luke’s phrasing here indicates that he’s aligned with his mother in his thinking of Black Oak as not being “modern.”

“[W]hen I closed my eyes I saw Hank and Cowboy on the bridge. I was suddenly hopeful that Hank was still there, still in Camp Spruill rummaging for a biscuit, still throwing rocks at the barn at midnight. Then it would all be a dream.”

Luke’s imaginings here indicate that his initial response to witnessing a second murder is outright denial. He’s emotionally unequipped to deal with this trauma, so he retreats into fantasy.

“I suddenly thought about the dead monkey, and I started crying. I didn’t want to cry, and I tried not to, but the tears were pouring out, and I couldn’t control myself.”

Luke describes, with great openness and authenticity, his feelings as he’s thinking about death in the wake of witnessing Hank’s murder. This passage illustrates the PTSD-like symptoms that Luke experiences after internalizing this act of violence, and being told that further violence will be enacted if he says anything about it.

“There was much debate and lots of opinions, and the overall tone was one of gloom. We’d been beaten so many times by the weather, or by the markets, or by the price of seed and fertilizer, that we expected the worst.”

Luke’s use of the first person plural in describing the plight of local farmers suggests that he has internalized some of the “worrying” and pessimism that his mother, earlier in the narrative, indicated the men in their family exhibit. This passage also foreshadows the impending weather events that will spur the novel’s final conflicts.

“The Spruills were a beaten bunch. All heads were down, shoulders shrunk, eyes half-closed. Their beloved Tally had run away with someone they considered low-bred, a dark-skinned intruder from a godforsaken country.”

This is one of the only passages in the novel that touches on the outright racism that the Mexican laborers were met with. The fact that all of the Spruills uniformly feel embarrassment because of Tally’s choice suggests that this racism is a widely-held societal norm in Black Oak.

“Pappy didn’t want one anyway. He said that if you had a phone then you had to talk to folks whenever it was convenient for them, not you.”

Pappy’s reason for denying their house a phone speaks to his need for control. The fact he’s threatened by the idea of having to speak to someone when he doesn’t want to indicates the level of control of his household that he expects to maintain.

“I was certain there was a reason the Cardinals had lost the pennant, but I couldn’t understand why God was behind it. Why would God allow two teams from New York to play in the World Series? It completely baffled me.”

Throughout most of the novel, Luke wholeheartedly embraces the teachings of the Baptist church. This is one of the rare moments where Luke expresses some seeds of doubt, indicating that he may be primed to question the faith tradition in which he was raised.

“We were all curious about the water. I’d personally witnessed it the day before, but I was anxious to see it creeping through our fields, inching its way toward our house, like some giant snake that couldn’t be stopped.”

Grisham’s language throughout the novel is plain, accessible, and matter-of-fact. He rarely uses heavily metaphorical language, but here he does bring in animal imagery to characterize the floodwaters’ approach. The snake imagery not only characterizes the water as dangerous but also conjures the biblical image of the destruction of Eden.

“They rarely came to Black Oak, only for funerals and maybe for Thanksgiving, and this was fine with me because they were city kids with nicer clothes and quicker tongues. I didn’t particularly like them, but I was envious at the same time.”

Here, Luke expresses his conflicted emotions about his urban cousins. This observation gets at a deeper, unexpressed fear—that he might become like them by leaving the farm. Grisham ends the novel in a moment for Luke that is hopeful but, as shown through musings like these, one that is also filled with some trepidation at not knowing what the future will hold.

“I certainly didn’t want Ricky to get married. He belonged to me. We would fish and play baseball, and he’d tell me war stories. He’d be my big brother, not somebody’s husband.”

Though Grisham presents Luke as a child who is mature beyond his years, he is careful to make Luke feel like a believable seven-year-old by offering observations such as these. Luke feels a certain amount of ownership over the people he’s closest to, in part because he struggles to imagine these people having lived experience outside of the world he’s inhabited all his life.