Growing Up

"She was a steady and self-reliant woman, and when I think of her after all the years she has been dead, I think of her brown hands...back then it never crossed my mind that she would ever be dead" (68).

It is in this moment that I feel we get the greatest sense of a time lapse through this story, Blackberry Winter by Robert Penn Warren. It is in this moment that Seth acknoledges his innocence at nine-years-old in a way that nearly all children who have grown up can--he finally grasped that things end and change. This story is about the loss of innocence and the realization that every person is not as steady as Seth's mom, or stoic like Seth's dad, or wise like Old Jebb, or hardworking like Dellie. These are the examples Warren gives us of a child's view of his adults. Most children grow up trying to emulate the older people in their lives, seeing them as pristine and infallible. But, as Seth sees first-hand, Dellie is not perfect as she slaps Little Jebb across the face. All adults do not fit this ideal, especially when the stranger--who never does receive a name--comes to town. This is Seth's first encounter with a bad man, and it colors all of the other events that occur that one day. It is as if in meeting the stranger, the wool was pulled from Seth's eyes and he saw that people in his town were starving enough to want to eat a drowned cow, that maybe Dellie was not the perfect "white-Negro," and that men who emerge from the woods without a name or manners are not going to be good news.

Question: What effect did these revelations have on the course of Seth's life? What did he mean when he said he "did follow him, all the years" (87)?