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Allusions
Chapter 40. Cypress Cove: 1970
Explanation and Analysis—Rodney Horn:
As Rodney Horn steps up to the stand to testify, the author uses idiom and dialect to root him firmly in the social world that Kya feels shut out of. Kya watches Rodney as he takes the witness stand in court, and she thinks about how separate his life is from her own:
Everyone in court watched Rodney Horn step onto the witness stand and swear to tell the truth. Kya recognized his face even though she’d seen it for only a few seconds. She turned away. A retired mechanic, he was one of them, spending most of his days fishin’, huntin’, or playin’ poker at the Swamp Guinea. Could hold his likker like a rain barrel. Today, as ever, he wore his denim bib overalls with a clean plaid shirt, starched so stiff the collar stood at attention. He held his fishing cap in his left hand as he was sworn in with the right, then sat down in the witness box, hat on his knee.
Although Kya doesn’t know Rodney well, she knows enough details about him to compare him to the other men of the town. Her use of idiom when she describes him as someone who “could hold his likker like a rain barrel” is a reference to his local reputation as a heavy drinker. Like a rain barrel, Rodney can apparently take on a huge amount of liquid. Secondly, this language frames him as someone who fits in and feels at home in the marsh community, unlike Kya herself. Thirdly, the homely idiom makes Rodney sound bizarrely familiar, both to Kya and to the reader.
When Kya thinks of Rodney she mentally describes him in the local dialect that he and the "others" like him speak in. The reader can see this in the dropped endings of the words “fishin’,” “huntin’,” and “playin’.” These details reflect the speech patterns of people in Kya’s world, and they help define Rodney as part of the group that has always excluded her. After learning to read and educating herself through books, Kya has stopped speaking and thinking with the heavy North Carolina accent of her peers. When Kya thinks of Rodney she has little context for him herself, so she thinks of how others who know him might describe him. Even in her mind she’s setting a distance between herself and Rodney, creating a boundary which labels him as “one of them.”
Related Themes:
