45 pages • 1 hour read
John GrishamA Painted House
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
A Painted House
As suggested by its status as the novel’s title, “a painted house” is the narrative’s central image, the focal point of the theme of Class Consciousness in Rural Mid-century Arkansas, and one of its most complicated symbols. Luke notes early in the narrative that “paint” is “a sensitive word around the Chandler farm” because his mother has always wanted to paint their house (65), but Pappy and Gran refused on the grounds that paint is a waste of money. For Luke’s mother, having a painted house is a status symbol and an affirmation that she’s living a life in which every choice doesn’t have to be dictated by her class status. For Luke’s grandparents, having an unpainted house not only saves them money but also embraces their perceived status. The fact that the painting of the house is a point of conflict between Luke’s mother and his grandparents suggests that there’s an aspirational rift between these generations: Pappy sees farming as a way of life whereas Kathleen Chandler sees farming as a means to gain the wealth to stop farming.
The Chandler house does start to get painted, but not because of any of the Chandlers. Trot Spruill acquires paint with Tally’s help and begins to paint the house by himself. Trot’s choice stuns Luke in part because it is an act of remarkable generosity from someone whom Luke perceives to be more financially disadvantaged than he is. It’s also a striking choice because Trot—someone who Luke assumes has little agency because of his disability—takes on this task without seeking the permission of his elders and without help from anyone else. When the Spruills leave the farm for good, Trot gives the paint and paintbrush to Luke, who states that he “had no choice but to take it” (315). With his mother’s encouragement, Luke proceeds to dedicate much of his time and money to the painting of the house. By accepting the responsibility of this task, Luke takes it into his own hands to resolve the standoff between his mother and grandparents all these years. For the first time in his life, he exerts his agency to change his family’s circumstances. The fact that Luke isn’t able to finish painting the house and leaves the brushes for Pappy, who promises that he’ll finish the job, suggests that Luke also has the power to change his family members’ perspectives. In this way, the painting of the house represents both Luke coming into his agency and the possibility that all the Chandlers have room in their lives to change and grow.
The Cardinals Jacket
With the money that he’ll make picking cotton, Luke aspires to buy a sports jacket from his favorite baseball team—the Cardinals. Luke’s desire to own this jacket represents the conflicting trajectories he sees for his life. On the one hand, the jacket speaks to Luke’s aspiration to become a professional baseball player for the Cardinals and, in doing so, escape the farm that has ensnared his father and grandfather. On the other hand, his pursuit of this jacket embodies his fealty not only to this St. Louis-based team but also to Pappy, from whom he inherited his love of the Cardinals. The routines of Pappy’s life are structured around the baseball team—he makes time at night to listen to the broadcast of the games, and he goes into town to talk about the team’s progress with other men. Luke’s loyalty to the Cardinals speaks to a loyalty to Pappy’s way of life.
Luke remains a diehard Cardinals fan throughout the novel, but his attitude toward the jacket begins to shift as his relationships to Pappy and the farm begin to change. When Luke watches the Yankees play on television for the first time, he says, “I knew I would never again be able to properly hate the Yankees. They were legends […]” (271). Luke also vows never to tell Pappy that he likes the Yankees. This shifting baseball team allegiance suggests that as Luke gains more exposure to the world outside of Black Oak, his outlook and priorities begin to shift; he sees the world in a new way, and he’s beginning to see his place in that world differently. By the end of the novel, Luke has given away all the money saved for his Cardinals jacket to work toward his mother’s goal of painting the house. This choice symbolically suggests that, as he grows older, Luke is moving away from an identity that is defined entirely by the Cardinals—and, by extension, entirely by Pappy’s desires. The selflessness of his actions also demonstrates how his experiences over the fall have changed him. Material wealth means something different to him now that he understands how it can be used to benefit others.
Cotton
Cotton is one of the novel’s most ubiquitous images. The need to pick cotton instigates the novel’s early tensions; the act of picking it fills most of the characters’ days; the tactile experience of working with the plant is vividly described; and the failure to harvest it creates a financial burden that drives the Chandlers’ decision at the end of the book. Because of its ubiquity, cotton has many symbolic resonances throughout the novel. From Luke’s perspective, though, cotton represents a dying way of life that is slowly being rendered obsolete by a modernizing American job market.
Early in the novel, as Luke walks out to start picking for the first time, he reflects, “The soil was dark and rich, good Delta farmland that produced enough to keep you tied to it” (23). “Tied” suggests that he feels trapped by his family’s commitment to the land—and that the successful completion of this commitment only begets further obligation. The possibility of escaping the cotton-farming life is as daunting to Luke as the prospect of picking the entire harvest: He is only weighed down by the cotton the more he works, bloodied and bruised for his effort to make the plant useful for himself and his family.
Jimmy Dale’s arrival represents the first incursion of modernity on the Chandler farm. Jimmy Dale arrives in a car that Luke describes as “new and clean and undoubtedly the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen” (204). This “new and clean” car represents everything that cotton-picking is not; from Luke’s perspective, it is glamorous and symbolic of a life in which money comes without weeks of back-breaking labor. The car embodies a type of mobility that is inaccessible to Luke on the farm. Luke’s parents’ choice to leave cotton farming behind at the end of the novel represents a break from the traditional modes of labor that have defined them. They leave to pursue work in the automobile industry—a choice that speaks to their desire to pursue more modern labor markets and leave behind the difficulties and lifestyle tied to the image of cotton.
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