Cold Sassy Tree Character Analysis

Understanding Death Death is something most people have to deal with, but no one really knows how to cope with it. Olive Ann Burns writes a novel about a young boy who tries to cope with multiple deaths throughout his life. This novel is named Cold Sassy Tree, based off of some of the stories Burns father told her when she was a child. Cold Sassy Tree is placed in the early 1900s in a small town called Cold Sassy. The main character, Will Tweedy, goes through multiple big events in his childhood that shape him into the person he became at the end of the novel. After several life-changing events that occur in Will Tweedy's childhood, he transfers from struggling with understanding death to clearly understanding death. One of the deaths that happen in Will’s life is, Grandma Blakeslee. …show more content…
Grandpa Blakeslee was closing the store one night and two outsiders came in and mugged him. Found on the floor, Blakeslee looked dead as ever, bleeding and bruised up. Trying to recover from the incident, Grandpa Blakeslee catches pneumonia and dies a little later. In Grandpa Blakeslee will, he gave the house to Miss Love, let Loma and Mary keep their house, and gave all three of them a thousand dollars each. In the will it says Will would receive four hundred dollars for college after working at the store for ten years. Grandpa Blakeslee also says he was a short mourning, which is how Will thinks as well. “Now then, the funeral party. In case you aint noticed, the first three letters of the word funeral spells fun. So a week or two after I die, you all have a dinner on the grounds at one of the churches, or if they aint in favor, have it at the ballpark…I hope everybody in Cold Sassy will come, white and colored. Have a happy get-together with kinfolks and old friends” (Burns 459). After all these deaths, Will has an idea on how he understands