The Rotating Father (Symbol)
Bev's repeated marriages and divorces act as a symbol of the decline of traditional American family values. She is adulterous and abusive with her partners, and she eventually begins to direct her abuse towards her two children as well. The lack of a stable father figure provides Vance with a sense of anxiety, sadness, and lack of stability. In fact, his last name was changed to that of one of his stepfathers, to whom he does not communicate for most of the book. After a certain point, Vance begins to mention each new stepfathers with nonchalance, only providing each one's first name and a brief description. It is as though he has lost the will to connect with what could have otherwise been a parental figure (no doubt also fueled by his mother's tendency to sabotage any positive relationship she has). In this sense, the rotating father figure stands as a symbol of the dissolution of the family unit and the resulting issues.
Kentucky (Symbol)
Vance paints Kentucky as a pastoral, albeit dilapidated, landscape of the past. With its rolling hills, barns, and "hollers," it is a place far removed from the factories of the Rust Belt in Ohio where Vance was raised. To this end, Vance uses Kentucky as a symbol of the old, rural, traditional America of his ancestors. Here, the family unit was all-important and the communities were, in their own perverse way, strong and safe. People were loyal and supported one another. Yet in order to find employment, thousands were forced to move north. Even so, the ways of Kentucky were transplanted to the Midwest and often did not make for stable family dynamics or strong communities. Vance views Kentucky as an idyllic setting of days gone by.
Yale (Symbol)
After serving with the Marines in Iraq, Vance attending college at Ohio State University and later advanced to Yale Law School. Vance is particularly proud of his acceptance to Yale, a very prestigious institution. The symbol of Yale acts on several levels. It is first a measure of Vance's own achievement: once an unmotivated student, he was able to turn around his academic career to such a degree that he was able to attend one of the best law schools in the country. It is also a symbol of triumph over his circumstances. Despite being raised in a turbulent home with few financial resources, Vance was able to attend Yale due to his own incredible work ethic and family support.
Hillbilly Dialects, Accents, and Names (Motif)
Vance begins his second chapter by explaining the numerous "hillbilly" ways of pronouncing common words such as grandmother (Mamaw) or hollow (holler). This is a motif that appears throughout Vance's book, since he takes pride in the unique dialect he learned as a child even when attending an Ivy League school, where theoretically one is supposed to speak proper English. Throughout the book, Mamaw's unique way of speaking—littered with cuss words, of course—also shines through as a particularly Appalachian way of speaking. This motif also appears in the negative when Vance talks about the social workers, lawyers, and judges involved in his court case, who all had "TV accents," meaning they did not speak in the twang that his family did. He also discusses accents when referring to Barack Obama's neutral accent, to which so many people in Middle America could not relate.
In Vance's world, people also have nicknames that their family uses to refer to them, such as Uncle Pet or Aunt Wee, thus promoting a sense of family stability: the family is allowed to call each other special names, but no one else. Vance himself struggles with his namesake, as he identifies more as a Vance but is given the names of his various father figures, with whom he cannot identify. Ultimately, Vance changes his name to Vance when he gets married, restoring him to the roots and namesake of which he is so proud.
Man Who Denied God's Help (Allegory)
Mamaw commonly told Vance a parable in which a man asked for help from God while drowning. Although the man received help in many forms, such as a passing boat who offered to save him, he refused it, claiming that he was waiting for help from God. Ultimately, the man perishes because of his stubborn decision to wait from God's help, and he asks God in heaven why he failed to help him. God answers that he sent him several different forms of help, including a passing boat, but the man refused them. Mamaw uses this example to show that God offers help in unforeseen ways, and so we must depend on each other in order to get out of sticky situations.
