39 pages • 1 hour read
Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
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Symbols & Motifs
Fire
Fire is a recurring motif throughout Ray’s discussions of the longleaf pine forests, serving as both a force for destruction and rejuvenation. The flatlands where longleaf pine grows are often prone to severe thunderstorms, and lightning often sets the pine trees ablaze. In Chapter 4, Ray first connotes this fire with violence and destruction: “Once lightning struck, the fire might burn slowly through the grasses for weeks, miles at a time […] If the [pine] seeds began to grow, lightning would burn them” (36). However, longleaf pine slowly begins to adapt in spite of fires. The trees develop deep root systems before quickly growing during the seasons when the lightning is rarer, as well as thick bark that can withstand fire. Though fire is typically thought of as a threat to forests, longleaf pine instead evolves to thrive within the harsh environment, lending the trees the nickname: “the pine that fire built” (38).
The animals and vegetation that live within longleaf pine forests have also adapted to live with the ongoing fires. Many of the forests’ species—such as indigo snakes, rabbits, and lizards—take shelter from the fire within gopher tortoises’ burrows. However, the fire also plays a crucial role in many species’ survival, as the burnings prevent “dense understory vegetation” (172) from overtaking the forests. Such dense vegetation would prevent the gopher tortoise from reaching the herbs it eats for food. Similarly, the pine savanna bogs which border the longleaf pine forests would also be overtaken by woody shrubs without the fires, which would kill many of the species that inhabit the bogs. Human practices of preventing forest fires, while well-intentioned, have led to the further collapse of longleaf pine forest ecosystems across the U.S. south.
Mental Illness
Throughout Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, Ray explores the devastating effect that mental illness has on people and their loved ones. Various forms of mental illness run through Ray’s family bloodlines. Though these mental illnesses were undiagnosed, Ray believes now that both Daddy and her grandfather Charlie were afflicted by a form of bipolar disorder, suffering from occasional delusions and bouts of mania. Daddy and Charlie’s delusions often result in their family being placed in unpleasant or outright dangerous situations. At the height of Daddy’s mental illness, he locks his family in a room for hours, refusing to properly feed them based on orders from God. Charlie refuses to accept treatment for his mental illness, and eventually abandons his family, leaving his wife, Clyo, to raise eight children on her own. Charlie is also “prone to [inflicting] violent and unmerited punishment” (40) on his relatives, stemming from his illness. Throughout Ray’s discussions of mental illness, she emphasizes how the disease takes a toll on the sufferer, his or her family members, and/or loved ones.
As a child, Ray is given little vocabulary to make sense of what her father is going through: “Through the years I had no way of understanding what was happening [to Ray’s father]—no language for it. I had only emotions. Terror” (79). When people do speak of her father’s delusions, they only refer to it in vague and negative words, such as “crazy, loco, insane” (78). Lacking a proper medical understanding of mental illness, Ray grows terrified of it, convinced that she might also succumb to delusional thinking. By providing these examples, Ray effectively addresses how the language used for mental illness impacts one’s understanding of it.
Junkyard
Much of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood explores Ray’s relationship to the junkyard where she grows up—treating it both as a source of pride and of embarrassment. Ray’s childhood is spent largely confined to the junkyard, as Daddy forbids his children from participating in social activities with other schoolchildren. As a result, Ray deeply identifies with the junkyard, at one point describing herself as a “junkyard daughter” (184). The junkyard provides Ray and her siblings with ample opportunities to explore and play. Ray will often climb into a junk car with her brothers and pretend to be gangsters on the run. However, when interacting with people outside of the junkyard, Ray learns to feel ashamed of her family home. Ray recognizes that her family’s business marks her as poor and different from most children, and she often desires to leave the junkyard behind her. As an adult, Ray brings a boyfriend with a PhD to visit her family’s junkyard home. Despite her warnings, he seems shocked by the junkyard, and breaks up with her soon after the visit.
Though Ray has many fond memories of the junkyard, she also mourns the longleaf pine forest that once existed on the junkyard’s land. Ray cannot help but think of this forest when visiting home, and views the junkyard as “a monument to my deepest regret” (267). However, Ray also describes the junkyard as being similar to “[…] wilderness. Both are devotees of decay. The nature of both is random order, the odd occurrence and juxtaposition of miscellany […]” (268). The similarities between the junkyard and natural wilderness suggest that perhaps there is a way for the two to coexist, where pine trees grow alongside Ray’s father’s junk cars.
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