The Painted House

The book A Painted House by John Grisham creates a strong sense of place. The book starts by the narrator, a little boy named Luke, saying that his grandfather, known as Pappy, are searching for workers to help them with the cotton picking. They hire the Spruills who are known as hill people and a few Mexican workers who come to the area looking for work. Besides working long hours under the hot sun in the fields picking cotton, Luke's life is wonderful until he sees Hank Spruill attack three boys from the Sisco family on the Main Street in the Co-op, one of them is beaten so badly he dies from his wounds. Hank tells Sheriff Stick Powers that Luke was a witness who can support his version of the event, and the frightened boy backs up his story,

although the adults who are there, including the sheriff, suspect he's too scared to admit the truth. When Luke sees Cowboy, one of the Mexicans, later murder Hank with his switchblade and toss his body into the river, Cowboy threatens to kill Luke's mother if Luke tells anyone what he saw. Cowboy and Tally, the daughter of the Spruills, then run off together and are not seen again. Luke also learns that his Uncle Ricky who is fighting in the Korean War, might be the father of the child that Libby Latcher, the eldest daughter of the Latchers who are their poor sharecroppers neighbors, had later on in the story. The story describes mostly Luke’s ordinary weekly routine. Starting with a breakfast of eggs, ham, biscuits, and a cup of coffee, then he works hard in the fields, which concludes to an evening on the front porch, where the family gathers around the radio to listen to Harry Caray announce the St. Louis Cardinals baseball games. Usual Saturday afternoons are spent in town, where the adults share gossip and concerns, while the children visit the movie house. Sunday mornings are for church. Later on in the story, a carnival comes to town, where Hank earns a lot money by taking down a famous wrestler named Samson. The annual town picnic comes and goes, then Luke is introduced to the television for the first time, so he can watch a live broadcast of a World Series game. A flood destroys the family's cotton crop before the harvest is completed, and Luke's parents decide to travel to the city to find work in a Buick plant. The book ends with Luke's mother smiling on the bus, finally leaving the cotton farming. The book's title signifies the Chandler house, which never has been painted, a sign of their lower social status in the community. One day Luke discovers Trot Spruill has been secretly painting the house white, and eventually he continues the job with the approval of his parents and the assistance of the Mexicans, and giving up some of his own savings to buy the paint. The theme of the book is realizing the harsh reality of the world from an innocent start. This book is a coming of age story. Luke learns about the hardships of life, hard work in the family's cotton fields, discrimination, and prejudices in his rural agricultural community.
Furthermore, the author creates a great sense of place by using certain words to describe the place.

The author also uses certain slang to create a sense of place. For example, on the bottom of page 36 and the top of page 37, Luke said “Our house faced south, the barn and crops were to the north and west, and in the east I saw the first hint of orange peeking over the flat farmland of the Arkansas Delta. The sun was coming, undaunted by clouds.” This illustrates the sense of place painted by the author because he gives direction which way the house, barn, and crops were and which way  the sun was coming out of. He also describes how the sun looks like which is “a hint of orange peeking over the flat farmland of the Arkansas Delta,” you can just picture it in your find. Another example where the author uses certain words to illustrate the place is, “The hedge rows around the front yard were perfectly manicured. Their fences were straight and needed no repair. Their garden was huge and its yield legendary. Even their old truck was clean...And their house was painted, the first one on the highway into town. White was the color, with gray trim around the edges and corners. The front porch and front steps were dark green. Soon all the houses were painted,” which is on page 64. This illustrates the sense of place painted by the author because you can just imagine how perfect the Clenches home was, and how neat and new it looked by how it was described. By using the words manicured, straight and needed no repair, huge, legendary, clean, and painted, the author created an image in your head. He also described what color the paint was in different areas and when he said that all the rest of the houses were painted to, you can see an image in your head of how it might look like.  One more example is, “Every store, shop, business, church, even the school faced the Main Street, and on Saturdays the traffic inches along, bumper to bumper, as the country folks flocked to town

for their weekly shopping,” which is on page 3. This shows the author illustrated a sense of place because it says how every place is facing Main Street, you can picture every place facing the direction of Main Street and you can see how on Saturdays every car is stuck in traffic from bumper to bumper. You can also imagine how all the people in the country go to town for shopping. By using the words faced, bumper to bumper, and flocked the author paints a picture in your head of how all these images look like. The quote, “ A well-developed geographical sense of place is one that looks carefully a  local idiosyncrasies, keeps an open mind about them, and then sees through these to the large patterns and process they signify” applies to this book because in the book when the characters say y’all, howdy, ain’t, cripple, ma’am, webacks, hillbilly, sodbusters, pickin, yankee, and reckon multiple times, they are using the local Southern slang, which is a type of idiosyncrasies. They also don’t know proper English when they say “Me and Stacey” instead of Stacey and I which is for them a local way of talking.
Moreover, this novel demonstrates a “poisoned sense of place” because for Stacey still would hold only bad memories because it is where she saw a snake and where a seven year old boy humiliated her in front of everyone by making her think there was a snake outside the bathroom when she was inside. This will be a “poisoned sense of place” for her. This is also a “poisoned sense of place” for Luke’s mother, Kathleen, because she grew up in a nice and clean painted house near the town on a small farm with kids who didn’t have to farm cotton and her father drove her to school, she didn’t have to walk. Then when she got married a lot of things changed, she had to farm more and didn’t have a nice painted clean house. Her child was also forced to farm at such a young age and she didn’t want him to farm at all in his life. This is  “poisoned sense of place” because she lost all the luxuries she used to have. The author creates a very “well-defined geographical sense of place” in this book because in the South people are more religious and there are more Baptists over there, so when in the book it says they go to church every Sunday and no one works on Sundays it shows that they are super religious in the book which creates a clear geographical place. Also when the book talks how the weather is changing from hot in September to slowly cold starting in October and then thunderstorms and hail came, soon the river flooded and ruined all their crop, which shows a very “well-defined geographical sense of place,” since that is what happens in real life too. In conclusion, the novel A Painted House is a boy's life from innocence to experience.