The Southern Characteristics in a Short Story Family, a word that is defined differently for each person. One person could have a loving and caring family while another could have a broken and dysfunctional home life. Many Southern authors write about the different family types that the characters or they themselves have lived through. In “Somehow Form a Family”, Tony Earley writes about the life of a boy in a family that is only brought close together through a television set and its programs. Due to being a Southern author, Earley illustrates many of the characteristics of Southern literature in “Somehow Form a Family”. These characteristics are: the significance of family, the importance of the outdoors, and that death is an active subject.
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The first characteristic that Earley enforces is family, or rather, the significance of that family. The narrator, the son, says, “I was the brother in a father-mother-brother-sister family” (Tony Earley 1). Immediately, it is noticed that the family is of the nuclear type and seems quite close to each other. Readers notice though that the family is actually only together in front of the television. In fact, shelly and the narrator seem the closest due to the shows on the television and not due to the parents. For example, “After school we watched Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island, and The Andy Griffith Show” (8). During this, the father and mother stopped communicating towards each other. The father moved out of the house and only came to talk with the family on Saturdays, around the television. With only the television keeping the family together and the home life turning sour, the son turned to living in the shows on the television. He even began dreaming about living a fantasy life with the characters, “I lay in bed at night and imagined being married to Jan Brady but having an affair with Marsha. I …show more content…
Earley applies this characteristic by using the boy to describe the town. For instance, “We lived in a four-room house at the edge of the country, at the foot of the mountains, outside a small town in North Carolina, but it could have been anywhere” (1). By using this specific characteristic, Earley allows the readers to make the connection that this family could be anyone and anywhere in the world. The importance of the outdoors is that without this, Shelly and her brother would not have discovered Burlon Harris by riding their bikes through the town. Harris, “kept horses and let us play in his barn. Shelly once commandeered one of his cats and brought it home to live with us. Burlon did not mind; he asked her if she wanted another one. We rode our bicycles toward Mr. Harris's house as if pulled there by gravity” (2). Harris allows the children the knowledge of a real family by treating the children themselves as family. Without this man in their lives, the children would not have had someone to turn to before the new television was bought. While the children did not know why they were going to Harris’s barn all the time, readers understand that they are seeking out someone to form a true family with that will remember them until there
The first characteristic that Earley enforces is family, or rather, the significance of that family. The narrator, the son, says, “I was the brother in a father-mother-brother-sister family” (Tony Earley 1). Immediately, it is noticed that the family is of the nuclear type and seems quite close to each other. Readers notice though that the family is actually only together in front of the television. In fact, shelly and the narrator seem the closest due to the shows on the television and not due to the parents. For example, “After school we watched Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island, and The Andy Griffith Show” (8). During this, the father and mother stopped communicating towards each other. The father moved out of the house and only came to talk with the family on Saturdays, around the television. With only the television keeping the family together and the home life turning sour, the son turned to living in the shows on the television. He even began dreaming about living a fantasy life with the characters, “I lay in bed at night and imagined being married to Jan Brady but having an affair with Marsha. I …show more content…
Earley applies this characteristic by using the boy to describe the town. For instance, “We lived in a four-room house at the edge of the country, at the foot of the mountains, outside a small town in North Carolina, but it could have been anywhere” (1). By using this specific characteristic, Earley allows the readers to make the connection that this family could be anyone and anywhere in the world. The importance of the outdoors is that without this, Shelly and her brother would not have discovered Burlon Harris by riding their bikes through the town. Harris, “kept horses and let us play in his barn. Shelly once commandeered one of his cats and brought it home to live with us. Burlon did not mind; he asked her if she wanted another one. We rode our bicycles toward Mr. Harris's house as if pulled there by gravity” (2). Harris allows the children the knowledge of a real family by treating the children themselves as family. Without this man in their lives, the children would not have had someone to turn to before the new television was bought. While the children did not know why they were going to Harris’s barn all the time, readers understand that they are seeking out someone to form a true family with that will remember them until there