As a precious and expensive commodity, coffee represents luxury to the subsistence-farming Creighton family. When the war causes the price of coffee to spike, it shows how the Civil War affected nearly everyone in the United States personally, not just the soldiers fighting for the Union or Confederate Armies. Coffee also serves as an index of maturity; at nine years old, Jethro Creighton begins to participate in the adult tasks of planting and harvesting, and because of this, he is granted a share of coffee alongside the book’s adult characters.
Coffee Quotes in Across Five Aprils
Ellen lay in her bed, limp with the agony of a headache. It always happened when the supply of coffee ran out. Given a cup of strong, hot coffee, the pain would leave her almost immediately; lacking it, her suffering mounted by the hour until the pain became almost unbearable. Schooled to believe that self-indulgence of any kind was morally unacceptable, Ellen was deeply ashamed of her dependency on coffee. She tried brewing drinks of roasted grain or roots, but her nervous system was not deceived by a beverage that resembled coffee only in appearance. She tried stretching out her supply by making a very weak drink, but she might as well have drunk nothing; the headaches were prevented only by coffee that was black with strength.
In late March of 1862, coffee had reached the unheard price of seventy cents a pound, and the papers predicted it would rise even higher.
Coffee Symbol Timeline in Across Five Aprils
