Appalachian Culture: A Nostalgic Exploration through Novels

Throughout history, culture is articulated in a plethora of manners: music, food, and literature, to name a few. Nonetheless, the novel has arguably proved to be the most excellent and effective vehicle for expressing culture, and this is certainly true when considering Appalachian culture. Novels such as Cold Mountain, Fair and Tender Ladies, Farewell, I’m Bound to Leave You, All Over but the Shoutin’, and Clay’s Quilt work to highlight a number of themes and aspects of Appalachian culture. However, perhaps the most indisputable recurring theme throughout these novels is the characters’ nostalgia for times past. This yearning manifests itself differently for each individual character, and on occasion, one character may experience many

This novel is Bragg’s memoir of sorts as he recounts the story of his life and the relationships he established throughout its entirety. It commences with Bragg’s interaction with his estranged father, who is on the brink of death. In what appears to be an attempt to reconcile for his absence, Bragg’s father gives him boxes full of books, which Bragg deems “the only treasure I truly have every known” (Bragg 13). Following this bequest, Bragg’s father proceeds to tell him the tale of how he individually and intimately killed a man while a soldier stationed in Korea. Throughout his account of the experience, it is clear that the recollection is painful. While in Korea, he clearly desired to return to a time before the war because he dreaded that it would alter him as a person: “It was what he feared, more than dying: losing part of himself” (Bragg 18). After Bragg left his father’s abode, he expresses his own nostalgic recollection of how things once were. He remembers a brief time in which “we were something very like a family…Our daddy came home almost every evening and we sat around a table and ate supper…my momma would run over, wiping, fussing, and my daddy laughing and laughing and laughing. It was nice” (Bragg 54). Bragg seems to pine for this sense of family which evaded him so early in his life. Although Bragg and his father long for two utterly different times and circumstances, they are similar in that they do indeed demonstrate a heartfelt yearning for times that were