"The Circus in the Attic" and Other Short Stories Literary Elements

Short Story Collection/American Fiction

The story in which setting is most integral to the story is “Prime Leaf” which is inspired by the real-life events known as the Black Patch Tobacco Wars. Warren’s story is situated within the context of this roughly five year long industrial battle as well as taking place in the same western Kentucky region.

The narrator of most of the stories in this collection is a third-person objective observer who plays no part in the story, but interjects himself into the narrative as a distinct character through conversational exposition, irony, and direct address of the reader as “you.”

The story which is almost universally agreed to depend the greatest upon tone to achieve its effect is “The Confession of Brother Grimes.” The narrative tone is unusually corrosive in its irony and the overall mood is best described as cynical.

The story in which the divide between hero and villain is most starkly established is undoubtedly “Blackberry Winter” in which the protagonist is an innocent young boy and the protagonist is nothing less than the devil.

"Circus in the Attic” gains its power from the emotional conflict at the heart of its narrative. This conflict is between the controlling and domineering mother of Bolton Lovehart and her son’s one single goal in life: to be left alone to construct the titular model.

“The Life and Work of Professor Roy Millen” is a very short story in which nothing much happens and the only thing of any real interest in the psychology behind its climax. That climax is a letter written by the title character in which he betrays a young student who had been his protégé by responding to the student’s request for a letter of recommendation for a scholarship with a letter pointing out the character flaws which made him undeserving of consideration.

The climax of “The Patented Gate and the Mean Hamburger” is foreshadowed in one single line just a little less than halfway through the story: “Jeff was looking at Slick, and something was growing slowly in that hewed-cedar face, and back in the gray eyes in the ambush of thorny brows.”

The confession by Brother Grimes in “The Confession of Brother Grimes” is an example: “He had, he said, used black hair dye for twenty years.”

In “Blackberry Winter” the line “You have never seen a beach, but you have read the book and how the footprint was there” is an allusion Robinson Crusoe’s initial realization that he is not alone on the deserted island.

Warren brilliantly uses imagery to convey disgust at the idea of celebrating Confederate soldiers as heroes: “So the tumescent, rich, meaningless emotionalism that ached sweetly in the breasts of the middle-aged ladies of the community found release and focus in the monument. The United Daughters of the Confederacy, the defenders of ancient pieties and the repositories of ignorance of history, undertook to raise the money.”

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The title of “Prime Leaf” is itself a metonymic reference to tobacco crops.

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