Swallow Barn by John Pendleton Kennedy was the classic metaphor of the Old South. I think that the metaphor of Swallow Barn may have been especially true for people who had never been there during the time period in which Swallow Barn was written. The beauty of the property was a powerful idea because even when I think of an old southern plantation the images of a slow creek, hanging trees, and an old barn come to mind. Frank the main character is a classic southern gentlemen with interests in politics and not religion. Kennedy paints a picture of a classic southern life.
I was surprised to find that Kennedy himself was familiar with Southern life. Writing Swallow Barn as a satirical representation of the South brought up a question in my mind : What was Kennedy trying to point out? Kennedy was trying to point out that southern life was very political. By emphasizing how the property of Swallow Barn was transferred and exchanged so many ways was an attempt to show the complexity and the political nature of land in the south. Land was an important feature of the South. Kennedy explains how Frank had been interested in politics and wanted to explore it further so he went to Washington to get a first hand view of what there was. Kennedy here is satirizing the only way that southern gentlemen had to protect their way of life. To protect there their land they had to use the power of government. Southern lifestyle was being assaulted so Frank and others like himself knew in order to protect their agrarian gentry politics had to be used.
The message that I think Kennedy was trying to send may have been that southern gentlemen knew that their way of life was waning. In order to protect this they used government. The question that still remains unanswered in my mind is: Do the southern gentry at this time feel that slavery is wrong or is it just that their way of life is being attacked?
ME!
- Kyle P.
- I am a freshman at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York. I am majoring in History and Political Science. I am proud to say that I live in the Berkshires
5 comments:
I came across the same questions when reading Swallow Barn. I don't really know whether southern people thought slavery was wrong or whether they just didn't care. I'm not quite sure which reading this was from but one of the authors that we have read said something about the color of their skin not mattering. He went on to say that both whites and blacks could be slaves. So if he is saying that it's not the color of the exterior that makes people slaves, then what exactly is he saying makes one person a slave and the another not?
Wow, I already wrote a post here, then navigated away from the page before I sent it...I feel smart.
I really liked how you pointed out that Kennedy is trying to show us that Southern life is very political. At this time, the South is fighting the North on many political issues; as well as slavery they were competing on the economic future of our country. The North was industrializing and diversifying, while the South was a "one-trick pony". An interesting thing to think about is that these Southern writers are not just praising the South because they love it so much, but also because they are afraid of the North and the change it represents. By building up this notion of Southern superiority it reminded all Southerners of their identity. The southern economy had been declining for decades leading up to the civil war because the land was starting to give out on them. It had been over-farmed by harsh plants like cotton and tobacco and the land wasn't as great as it used to be. So I think a lot of the pre-civil war writings we read (Kennedy, Fitzhugh) have a certain amount of foreshadowing in the way the authors saw the future heading.
I like how you brought up the point of how important the land is to them. There really was no other option for them in the south. Basically they had to be farmers or slaves (of course it's not like that today). That's why I think it's interesting that politics were important, but I understand it a little more when you say that it was a way for them to protect their land. It's also interesting how stereotypical this piece is. It's easy to imagine the big plantation and the southern gentlemen because that's already kind of in our heads.
I don't think that people in the south thought that slavery was wrong i think that many of them believed that this was the way things were and it worked so they didn't see a need to change it. I don't think that they really realized what they were doing, they probably figured that they had paid for these people to be theirs, they were property to them. I don't think it would have mattered to them what color their slaves skin was.
Very interesting and thought provoking comments and questions, Kyle, well said. I think you are absolutely right in noting the truth in his metaphors, noting that he was making them a bit stereotypical. It is exactly what we picture when we think about the landscape of a southern plantation. I think you make a valid argument in saying that Kennedy showed how Swallow Barn "transferred and exchanged so many ways...an attempt to show the complexity and the political nature of the land in the south." This is important because it proves the importance of the land for southerners and brings up themes we have discussed already and I am sure will show up again in our readings.
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