Reconciliation of the North and South
The overarching theme of the collection which dominates every story except the title tale is the reconciliation between the North and South following the Civil War. This reconciliation is situated at the personal level in plots focusing on visitors from the North developing relationships with southern counterparts during visits to Georgia. In most of the stories, the reconciliation is achieved to various degrees of success, but in one particular story tragedy intervenes to reveal through symbolism the difficult of applying hopes for reconciliation to the larger scale at play.
The Economics of War and Peace
Not all of the Northern visitors who come to Georgia represent business interests, but most do. And of those who do, they are all integral to the process of rebuilding economic prosperity out of the financial ravage inflicted upon the South by the war. One story features a young man who provides the necessary investment to rebuild a moribund plantation farm while another is an agent scouting marble quarries for a Boston investment group. This theme is directly confronted paradoxically through the beginning and ending of the story “Little Compton” which ends with a wartime dream of a prophecy for a future “when peace and fraternity should seize upon the land, and bring unity, happiness, and prosperity to the people” yet opens the post-war recognition that “few Southern country towns have been more profitably influenced by the new order of things than Hillsborough in Middle Georgia.”
Perpetuating the Plantation Myth
Though certainly not to the extent that he does so in his more famous Uncle Remus, the slave characters and references to slavery in this volume all serve to perpetuate the plantation myth of benevolent masters and happy slaves in the same way. The title story strongly suggests that though Joe is now “Free Joe” his life is more miserable than he was still a slave. In “Little Compton” a slave character named Jake expresses doubt that freedom has a positive impact on slaves. Even the post-abolition story “Azalia” features a stereotypical black mammy character demonstrating a slavish devotion for the grown while women she “cared for” as a house slave.
