The Role Of Hiram Kelsey In The Prophet Of The Great Smoky Mountains

1494 Words3 Pages

Mary Murfree in her novel The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains, seeks to explain the lives of the mountain community in Tennessee and more so the life of the main protagonist, a preacher named Hiram Kelsey. Although Kelsey is the main protagonist in the novel and its title directly refers to him, he does not take the central role in the novel but is overshadowed by other characters who take up the bulk of the novel such as Dorinda Cayce and Rick Tyler a local outlaw. The novel explores many aspects of society such as issues regarding justice, law and order, ethics, animal rights, morality and romance. In summary, the story is about a mountain outlaw who is wrongly accused of murder and who is hunted by the authorities but decides to become a fugitive. In the end, the preacher sacrifices his life for the sake of the sheriff who the Cayce men seek revenge on after he insults their sister. This academic paper will aim at providing an in depth analysis of the character Hiram Kelsey and how he vividly portrays the American spirit throughout the novel. Upon the realization that Rick has fled after the …show more content…

In his defense, Fletcher claims that he lives within the confines of the law, whether right or wrong and is thus indifferent on what his actions may cause to others. As a result of his open condemnation of the blacksmith and his likening him to a biblical character who was a traitor names Judas, Kelsey gets arrested on suspicion that he may have plotted the escape of the wanted fugitive Rick from the blacksmith. In the true nature of the American spirit, any activity that is contrary to morality, justice and ethics is openly criticized for all to learn from it. Kelsey demonstrated this side of the American spirit without fear or favor and thus ends up in jail on purely suspicion

Show More
Related

  • Character Change In Arthur Miller's The Crucible

    1378 Words  | 3 Pages

    He went from optimistic to remorseful though his dialogue, stage directions, and how other’s perceived him and as he tried to fix his mistakes by trying to save those he put in jail, he was able to gather sympathy from the readers. Arthur Miller is able to represent a larger idea through Reverend Hale in retrospect to Communism and society in general. After World War II, the American government spread mass hysteria of Communism which led to innocent people being accused and hanged all thought America. Miller commented on how people did not speak up on how unfair it was and let innocent people’s lives be ruined. This can also be applied to today’s society in which innocent peoples are attacked and barely anyone helps them or stand up for them. People still struggle to speak up because they may be putting something at risk if they do so, but society should get past that in order to make life fair for

    Read More

  • How Does Faulkner Present Justice In Barn Burning

    619 Words  | 2 Pages

    It has been stated that while doing what is right is not always easy, it is in fact doing what is right despite it being difficult that is quite the accomplishment. Justice one finds to be one of the major themes throughout “Barn Burning”. The notion of intuitive justice presents itself as a characteristic explored throughout William Faulkner’s literary masterpiece “Barn Burning” through the protagonist Colonel Sartoris Snopes, also referred to as Sarty throughout “Barn Burning”. Faulkner presents Sarty and demonstrates his sense of justice through literal actions and dramatic context.

    Read More

  • William Harvey Prophet Of Monte Ne Sparknotes

    1132 Words  | 3 Pages

    William Hope Harvey was born the fifth of six children on August 16, 1851 to Colonel Robert Trigg Harvey and Anna Limbroux. Called Billy in his youth, Harvey went to school in a log house during the civil war, taught a term at sixteen, and graduated law school at nineteen. The book, “Coin Harvey, Prophet of Monte Ne” by Lois Snelling, was commissioned by the Benton County Historical Society to chronicle Harvey’s life from his birth on a farm in Buffalo, Virginia to the impact he would have on the Northwest Arkansas area well after his death on February 11, 1936 in Monte Ne, Arkansas. This book explores, briefly, the lives of Coin’s neighbors, past and contemporary.

    Read More

  • Covington's Conviction of Serpent Handling

    1067 Words  | 3 Pages

    Covington’s intellect boasts a curious ambition to solve the secrets of the Appalachia through factual data and personal inquiries. “Their first church in town burned to the ground” Covington explains, “They suspected arson, but charges were never brought…they moved to other locations…neighbors complained of the noise. Wherever the handlers relocated, tires got slashed and windows broken” (25). By presenting facts about the trouble the snake-handlers dealt with, Covington reveals how steadfast they are in their religious faith. The serpent-handlers’ strong devotion has turned into a tainted reputation for some, such as Glenn Summerford. Curious to hear Glenn’s version of why he was put in jail for ninety-nine years, Covington interviews him. When asked about his wife, Darlene, Summerford simply states that when she was “living right, she drank [poison]” (50). Faced with a lifetime sentence in a jail cell, Summerford shows no remorse, and instead criticizes his wife, whom he attempted to murder, for not living by the word of God. Glenn Summerford’s testimonial is a ...

    Read More

  • Echoes In The City Of The Angels Analysis

    1230 Words  | 3 Pages

    The setting of the essay is Los Angeles in the 1800’s during the Wild West era, and the protagonist of the story is the brave Don Antonio. One example of LA’s Wild West portrayal is that LA has “soft, rolling, treeless hills and valleys, between which the Los Angeles River now takes its shilly-shallying course seaward, were forest slopes and meadows, with lakes great and small. This abundance of trees, with shining waters playing among them, added to the limitless bloom of the plains and the splendor of the snow-topped mountains, must have made the whole region indeed a paradise” (Jackson 2). In the 1800’s, LA is not the same developed city as today. LA is an undeveloped land with impressive scenery that provides Wild West imagery. One characteristic of the Wild West is the sheer commotion and imagery of this is provided on “the first breaking out of hostilities between California and the United States, Don Antonio took command of a company of Los Angeles volunteers to repel the intruders” (15). This sheer commotion is one of methods of Wild West imagery Jackson

    Read More

  • Local-Color Regionalism in Tennessees Partner

    690 Words  | 2 Pages

    The literary movement of local-color regionalism in American literature is a very distinctive and interesting form of fiction writing that effectively combines regional characteristics, dialect, customs and humor. In Bret Harte’s Tennessee’s Partner, these characteristics helped the story jump off the page, allowing the reader to understand the “times” rather than just the characters. And, for that reason, I feel that this is an outstanding piece of work.

    Read More

  • Context, Violence and Leadership in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian

    1897 Words  | 4 Pages

    Cormac McCarthy was wise in choosing the Southwest as the setting for a novel of unprecedented bloodshed. No other land would have done McCarthy’s ideas justice, given that only the Southwest harbored such wanton violence. A ...

    Read More

  • Barn Burning

    972 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout the story “Barn Burning”, author William Faulkner conveys the moral growth and development of a young boy, as he must make a critical decision between either choosing his family and their teachings or his own morals and values. The reader should realize that the story “Barn Burning” was written in the 1930’s, a time of economic, social, and cultural turmoil. Faulkner carries these themes of despair into the story of the Snopes family.

    Read More

  • Douglass -- The Narrative

    1968 Words  | 4 Pages

    “Sincerely and earnestly hoping that this little book may do something toward throwing light on the American slave system, and hastening the glad day of deliverance to the millions of my brethren in bonds … relying upon the power of truth, love, and justice, for success in my … efforts and solemnly pledging myself anew to the sacred cause, I subscribe myself” (Douglass 76). With these words, Frederick Douglass (c. 1817-1895), an emancipated slave with no formal education, ends one of the greatest pieces of propaganda of the 19th century America: that slavery is good for the slave. He writes his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, as an abolitionist tool to shape his northern audience’s view of southern slaveholders. Through personal anecdotes, Douglass draws an accurate picture of slave life. Simultaneously, he chooses these events for how they will affect the northern audience’s opinion of southern slaveholders (Quarles ii). By using the written word, Douglass targets educated northern whites because they were the only group capable of changing the status quo. Illiterate northern whites and free northern blacks could not vote, while white Southerners would not vote because they did not want change. For that reason, Douglass used his life story as an instrument to promote abolition among literate northern whites (vi).

    Read More

  • The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta by John Rollin Ridge

    854 Words  | 2 Pages

    In her book, Limerick describes the “idea of innocence” that permeated the American West (36). According to the author, the underlying motive for every action was pure (even when it really was not). According to Western American folklore, early settlers did intend to victimize Indians and trespass on their land, but instead came to America to pursue new opportunities and improve their lives (Limerick 36). The same ideological theory may be applied to the motivations of the sensationalized outlaws from the time. For example, in her book Limerick details the life of John Wesley Hardin, an outlaw, who began his violent life of crime at the age of fifteen (36). According to the story, Hardin shot and killed a black man (Limerick 36). However, idolized as the son of a preacher, Hardin hid his crimes behind the veils of “bravery” and “honor” (Limerick 36). He claimed that he actually shot the man --...

    Read More

  • Hero And Antihero's: Butch Cassidy Vs. Silverado

    1412 Words  | 3 Pages

    The cowboy scenario in the west was only a very short period in American history, but it made a big enough of an impact on people’s views and took on a life of its own. As time progresses the views of the west change from the colorful mythologies to the more monotone realities. This vision of the west and the heroes and antiheros within it has evolved over time, in the beginning it was more romantic but as time went on different takes on the west started to unfold as focus faded from traditional heroes and turned to more personal heroes.

    Read More

  • The Myth of the Old West

    2022 Words  | 5 Pages

    Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in fact, A Century of Dishonor.” The frontier thesis, which Turner proposed in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, viewed the frontier as the sole preserver of the American psyche of democracy and republicanism by compelling Americans to conquer and to settle new areas. This thesis gives a somewhat quixotic explanation of expansion, as opposed to Helen Hunt Jackson’s book, A Century of Dishonor, which truly portrays the settlement of the west as a pattern of cruelty and conceit. Thus, the frontier thesis, offered first in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, is, in fact, false, like the myth of the west. Many historians, however, have attempted to debunk the mythology of the west. Specifically, these historians have refuted the common beliefs that cattle ranging was accepted as legal by the government, that the said business was profitable, that cattle herders were completely independent from any outside influence, and that anyone could become a cattle herder.

    Read More

  • Role of Religion in the Wilderness: James Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans

    1409 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the midst of his already successful career, Sigmund Freud decided to finally dedicate a book of his to religion, referring to the subject as a phenomena faced by the scientific community. This new work, Totem and Taboo, blew society off its feet, ultimately expanding the reaches of debates and intellectual studies. From the beginning, Freud argues that there exists a parallel between the archaic man and the contemporary compulsive. Both these types of people, he argues, exhibit neurotic behavior, and so the parallel between the two is sound. Freud argues that we should be able to determine the cause of religion the same way we determine the cause of neurosis. He believes, since all neuroses stem from childhood experiences, that the origins of this compulsive behavior we call religion should also be attributed to some childhood experiences of the human race, too. Freudian thought has been dominant since he became well known. In Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, religion becomes entirely evident as a major part of the novel, but the role it specifically plays is what we should question. Therefore, I argue that Freud’s approach to an inborn sense of religion and the role it plays exists in The Last of the Mohicans, in that the role religion plays in the wilderness manifests itself in the form of an untouchable truth, an innate sense of being, and most importantly, something that cannot and should not be tampered with.

    Read More

  • Myths in Tom Robbins’s Another Roadside Attraction

    5355 Words  | 11 Pages

    While Robbins’s work was at first ill received, by the mid-1970s the public had started to warm up to this quirky and thought provoking writer. Even today, his work invites inquiry about what prompted him to write this controversial novel. That is, who and what influenced this line of thought? What was happening in America and with Christianity during the period, in which he wrote and researched this piece of fiction? And, finally, why did he write in this sporadic, nonlinear fashion, inserting seemingly non-related details and encrypting an official report within the structure of a novel? And how does this relate to the influences mentioned above? All of these questions and more offer themselves up from the pages of this funny and whimsical, yet philosophical and wise novel, Another Roadside Attraction.

    Read More

  • The Virginian, by Owen Wister

    945 Words  | 2 Pages

    The cowboy hero, The Virginian, as portrayed in Owen Wister’s novel was the first of his kind and today is known as the stereotypical mythic cowboy figure which our view of the western frontier are based from. The Virginian was the first full length western novel apart from the short dime novels which marked the final stage in the evolution of the cowboy hero to a national icon. The Virginian was published in 1902 and at that time was wildly popular because of the settlement of the west. The story of the cowboy who had the skill and courage to take control of the untamed frontier enthralled people. The cowboy hero had a few distinguished qualities, he was a self-appointed vigilante, he had a very strict moral code, he had exceptional perception skills and he had the ability to adapt. Owen Wister’s The Virginian was the first to portray these qualities and really created a deeper cowboy character.

    Read More

More about The Role Of Hiram Kelsey In The Prophet Of The Great Smoky Mountains

Open Document