Bermuda Grass
In the story “Aunt Fountain’s Prisoner,” Bermuda grass is situated as the symbol of the predominant theme of the collection: reconciliation between North and South following the Civil War. The story is about a Northerner who comes to George and helps to bring a faltering plantation business back to health through investment and eventual marriage. His battle to control Bermuda grass becomes a larger symbol of this reconciliation when the narrator observes “he conquered it by cultivating it for the benefit of himself and his neighbors; and I suspect that this is the way he conquered his other opponents.”
The Old Tavern of Hillsborough
An old tavern located in Hillsborough, Georgia is mentioned in the opening paragraph of “Little Compton” as having been torn down and in its place replaced by “a new three-story brick hotel, managed by a very brisk young man, who is shrewd enough to advertise in the newspapers of the neighboring towns that he has `special accommodations and special rates for commercial travelers.’” The destruction and replacement of the old tavern with the context of the rest of the surrounding paragraph’s focus on the “business boom” being enjoyed by post-war Hillsborough instantly make it a symbol of the fatally limited dependence of the Old South slave-based economic system being replaced by the modern and more broad-based economy of the post-war condition.
Harriet Bledsoe (Tomlinson)
“Aunt Fountain’s Prisoner” is another story about the post-war economic condition and, as indicated previously, the attempt to forge reconciliation between North and South. In this instance, the two themes merge primarily in the figure of that Northerner who succeeds in cultivating Bermuda grass. He is successful in this attempt both in bringing the plantation back to life and sowing the seeds of blood relations with his marriage to the Southern daughter of the plantation’s matriarch. That particular character is pointedly described by the narrator in terms of being a prominent local figure whom most addressed as Mrs. Judge Tomlinson, “but my grandmother never called her anything else but Harriet Bledsoe, which was her maiden name.” This connection with her own past takes on larger metaphorical value as it becomes clearer that she is the story’s symbol for Southerners who may be willing to go along with reconciliation, but who possess in their “secret soul…an ineradicable contempt” for Northern influence and intrusion into their culture.
Free Joe
Free Joe, the title character of the story which gives this volume its name, is the most unfortunate symbol in the book and, even more unfortunately, a symbol everything that has reduced the status of Joel Chandler Harris from viable competitor to Mark Twain to a symbol of himself racial insensitivity. By making Joe’s life considerably less happy and fulfilling as a freed slave than he had been as a slave, “Free Joe” becomes a symbol for the underlying abomination of the “plantation myth.” Namely, that black men and women during the slavery era were actually happier and better off as slaves than as emancipated ex-slaves.
The Mocking-Bird
Mockingbirds are famous for their ability to mimic the sound of other species of birds. What may be less well-known about mockingbirds among those who do not share native habitats is they are one of the most ferociously territorial of any animal, bird or mammal or otherwise. Both the mimicry and willingness to aggressively protect its territory are symbolically played out in the tragic climax of “Trouble on Lost Mountain” when a young suitor driven to the extremes of jealousy attempts from too great a distance to protect his territory (a young woman) at the exact moment that a mockingbird’s song has moved her to mimic the object of the young man’s ire (a college-educated Northerner) by grabbing his hat and placing it atop her head.
