Tobacco Road

Tobacco Road is a 1932 novel by American author Erskine Caldwell. Set in rural Georgia on the outskirts of the city of Augusta, it concerns a family of impoverished white sharecroppers, the Lesters, who struggle economically during the Great Depression. The Lesters and their neighbors strive to build a brighter future as the cotton picking market is absorbed by advances in industrial technology and the increasing urbanization of Georgia. Many of the characters commit brutal and reckless acts in the process. The novel’s main character is Jeester Lester, a morally corrupt and ignorant man who experiences a change of heart when he learns to respect the land and people who make his life possible. The novel is controversial for its anti-natalist undertones, which have been interpreted as supporting the views of Caldwell’s eugenicist father, Ira Caldwell, who argued for the sterilization of poor whites in Georgia in 1930. Nevertheless, the novel is widely considered one of the most important books of the Great Depression, and was adapted into a 1941 film.

At the beginning of Tobacco Road, the Lesters’ family friend, Lov Bensey, trudges home, near the train yard, with a bushel of turnips he obtained 7 miles away. Lov makes a stop at the Lesters’ house to talk to Jeeter about Lov's wife, Pearl, who is also Jeeter’s twelve year old daughter. He also encounters Dude, who at sixteen is the youngest of the Lester sons; Jeeter’s wife, Ada; eighteen-year-old Ellie May, who has a cleft lip; and Grandma Lester. The family is starving, and tries to steal Lov’s turnips. Annoyed more than sympathetic or pitying, Lov goes home.

Sister Bessie Rice, a preacher with a deformity similar to Ellie May’s, proposes to Dude. Dude accepts, but has an ulterior motive: he hopes to drive the new car that she is about to purchase. Jeeter, meanwhile, is attracted to Bessie. Bessie goes to her shack to pray to God and ask for guidance on whether she should marry Dude. Jeeter’s family’s quality of life critically declines, but Jeeter refuses to relocate to the city to earn a better wage in the new cotton mills, since it would tear him away from the only life he knows. In the background, Jeeter and Ada both anticipate that they will die of starvation or malnourishment, but the foresight gives them an odd sense of fortitude. Ada merely hopes to be buried in a nice dress, and Jeeter hopes that his body isn’t eaten by rats, animals that he deeply fears.



Sister Bessie returns to the Lester house and announces that God approves of her marriage to Dude. They walk together to Fuller to buy a new Ford, with which they intend to travel around the United States evangelizing. The salesmen at the car dealership recognize that Bessie is ignorant about the true value of a car and profit greatly, while poking fun at her facial deformity. Bessie and Dude then go to obtain a marriage certificate. The county clerk criticizes her for trying to marry a teenager, but complies with the request. Within two days of buying the car, Dude and Bessie run into a wagon and kill its black driver. They damage the engine by driving without oil, and sell the spare tire for gas money, food, and lodging. At the cheap hotel, Bessie is employed as a sex worker by the manager. A few days later, Bessie tells Jeeter he can no longer ride in her Ford, and he kicks her off his property.

When Bessie retaliates, Jeeter and Ada beat her up until she gets into the Ford with Dude. In a rush to escape, they back up over Grandma Lester and crush her head. Lov finds Jeeter and asks about Pearl’s whereabouts. Pearl has fled to Augusta in a desperate attempt to escape their destitute community. They then notice Grandma Lester’s body and bury her in a field.

Lov leaves the train park, and the narrator comments on the inescapability of Jeeter’s position as a Southern sharecropper in the midst of the Great Depression. Though Jeeter wants to grow crops and it is the right time of year to do so, he is unable to plant anything. His landlord has vacated the area without notice to Jeeter and his community, reneging on a promise to give them seeds in exchange for a share in the crop output. None of the local stores are willing to give Jeeter or the other farmers credit for seeds and fertilizer, having determined that it would create too much financial risk.



At the tragic end of the novel, Jeeter sets fire to a crop of broom sedge hoping to prepare a region of land for farming the following spring. As he and Ada sleep, the fire licks the side of their home, lighting it on fire. It traps them inside, and they burn to death. Finally, the story turns back to Dude: he voices the same ambitions that Jeeter had voiced, and intends to plow the land that Jeeter had cleared. This ending suggests that the poverty plaguing the white sharecroppers during the Great Depression is cyclical, pointless, and unending.