A Painted Home Analysis

2.3 Depiction of the Rural South in the ‘50s in Grisham’s A Painted House
In his novel, Grisham portrays the Chandlers, a family that lives in the rural South. The family is relatively poor and works in the cotton fields, and employs people who also need money. The life of the Chandlers is not of high quality as they live in an unpainted house and have financial problems that do not allow them to buy certain facilities, such as television. Despite that, there are some forms of entertainment, such as baseball, that the family can afford, and it does not make the Chandlers so unfortunate.
A Painted House portrays a lower class family that earns money by working in the cotton fields. In the 1950s, the family typically consists of the husband, …show more content…
The problem, from Luke’s perspective, is even more important when Luke compares his life and his mother’s: “She’d been raised in a painted house” (Grisham 11). Luke is aware that the conditions in which he lives are completely different from those that his mother, Kathleen, lived in. Luke retells what his mother had told him about her dream life: “She would one day have a house in a town or in a city, […] with paint on the boards, maybe even bricks. “Paint” was a sensitive word around the Chandler farm” (Grisham 31). It shows that his mother’s dream is not attainable, and that the issue related to the house and paint is really poignant. Despite Luke’s mother’s wishes, the house is unpainted, and this shows that the family is poor, and the period, to some extent, is represented in the novel through the unpainted house. Also, as Velm notes, middle-class people can afford more commodities or luxuries than those who live in rural areas because people living in farms have fewer opportunities to find well-paid jobs (Velm 245). Grisham reflects this aspect through the motive of an unpainted house and the lack of money in the Chandler