45 pages • 1 hour read
John GrishamA Painted House
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Luke Chandler
Luke Chandler is the active, dynamic protagonist of A Painted House. At seven years old, Luke is a protagonist who seeks to make sense of the difficult and complicated world of the adults around him. Luke is, in many ways, a typical child: he’s obsessed with baseball and idolizes the Cardinals’ player Stan Musial; he’s curious about women but doesn’t understand the root of that curiosity; and he longs to leave the cotton fields, and watch movies and play ball with his friends in Black Oak. Luke, though, is also a highly earnest and sensitive child who is attuned to the difficulties of the adults in his life. Early in the narrative, Luke reflects on his uncle’s time in Korea: “What if he didn’t come home? It was a question I tortured myself with every night. I thought about him dying until I cried. I didn’t want his bed. I didn’t want his room” (55). Luke is so deeply affected by Ricky’s absence, and by the possibility of Ricky’s death, that even being in contact with Ricky’s physical possessions causes him to spiral with anxiety.
The fact that Luke is so carefully connected to the worries of the adults on the farm allows him to be capable of reasoning and decision-making that, at times, feel beyond his years. After Luke witnesses Jerry Sisco’s murder, he decides not to tell anyone what happened. He reasons,
I wouldn’t tell anybody since there was no way to win. Any involvement with the Siscos would make my life dangerous, and I didn’t want the Spruills to get mad and leave. The picking had hardly begun, and I was already tired of it (79).
Superficially, Luke’s logic seems to be self-interested: He doesn’t want the Spruills to leave because it would mean more work for him. Later, though, Luke refuses to divulge what he knows because arresting Hank would “upset all the farmers” (100). Luke is willing to take on a vast emotional burden to make the lives of his loved ones easier; these actions demonstrate great selflessness and emotional intelligence even at his young age.
Luke’s arc over the course of the narrative might best be described as a loss of innocence. There are some archetypal elements to his coming of age: The events of this novel begin to usher Luke into his heterosexuality, as his curiosity about women leads him to spy on the naked Tally. For the most part, though, the events instigating Luke’s loss of innocence are brutal and violent and force him to dramatically reconsider his understanding of the world. This loss of innocence, which reflects the Emotional Burdens of Coming of Age, is tied to Hank’s ever-escalating violence. Luke witnesses Jerry Sisco’s murder, Hank’s bludgeoning of Cowboy, and Cowboy’s retaliatory murder of Hank—and he must keep both of the murders secret for fear of endangering his family. The trauma of witnessing multiple violent murders and the burden of keeping these secrets unravel Luke as the novel progresses. Luke’s Navigating Patriarchal Violence results in a PTSD-like response when the act of peeling tomatoes visually and emotionally recalls the brutality he’s witnessed.
Luke’s experience of witnessing and holding onto these losses of life allows him, by the end of the novel, to accept the loss in his life. The novel ends with Luke and his parents leaving Black Oak and leaving behind all the world Luke has ever known—his grandparents, his friends, and his hometown. The wonder and joy that mark the closing scene, though, underscored by his mother’s slow smile, speak to Luke’s newfound ability to find happiness and meaning even in the face of loss.
Eli Chandler (“Pappy”)
Pappy is a static secondary character and mentor-like figure for Luke. He was once a “legendary baseball player” but was forced into farming after the death of his father (7). Pappy is one of the novel’s most disciplined characters. One of the very first facts that Luke shares about Pappy is that he “drove at thirty-seven miles per hour. His theory was that every automobile had a speed at which it ran most efficiently, and through some vaguely defined method, he had determined that his old truck should go thirty-seven” (2). This anecdote reveals that Pappy values routine—when he finds a method that works, he’ll continue to apply that method. More than routine, though, Pappy craves control. In this case, not just control over the machinery such that it operates at peak efficiency but also control over the people in his family. When Pappy’s in the car, no matter who’s driving, he demands that they adhere to his speed limit for the vehicle. Pappy creates rules and expects the people in his life to follow them.
Pappy’s arc over the course of the novel reflects his slow loss of control over his work and the people in his life. The investigation into Hank Spruill threatens to derail Pappy’s plans for harvesting the crops. He’s able to maintain control over this situation, though, by intimidating Stick Powers and demanding that the sheriff wait until the harvest is over before arresting Hank. It’s not surprising that Pappy intimidates the sheriff—Luke repeatedly alludes to how the townspeople are afraid to criticize him. Pappy might be able to control the people around him, but he’s unable to control the weather. The flooding destroys his crops and, with it, any chance of completing the harvest. This loss of control over his work leads to a loss of control over the people in his life. As much as Pappy wants to hold onto Luke and Luke’s parents, the failures of the crops force them to leave Black Oak. Luke’s narration doesn’t give much insight into how Pappy copes with this loss. As they say goodbye at the bus station, Luke notes that “when he pinched my cheek, I saw moisture in his eyes” (387). This is the most emotional reaction that Pappy has over the course of the novel, and it’s the closest Pappy comes to losing control over himself.
Tally Spruill
Tally Spruill is one of the novel’s most enigmatic characters. She is a dynamic secondary character and is the object of both Luke’s and Cowboy’s sexual interests. Luke has a difficult time making sense of Tally’s actions and motives. At times, she’s one of the only older characters who wants to spend time with him, and she even invites him to watch her naked body since, in her estimation, “it’s only natural […] for boys to look at girls” (130). Other times, though, Tally is closed off and mean to Luke. When she taunts him about Libby’s newborn being related to him, Luke notes that “[h]er words were cruel and her eyes looked mean. This was not the Tally I knew” (187). Tally’s interiority is inaccessible to Luke from his vantage as a seven-year-old boy. Her actions throughout the novel are, instead, left to interpretation.
One of the moments in which Tally is most active in the narrative is when she insists that Luke take her to spy on Libby’s delivery. It’s unfathomable to Luke why Tally would want to see this—and why she insists on getting so close once they get there. Though Luke can't realize it now, Tally’s interest in childbirth may stem from curiosity about what could happen to her own body. Unbeknownst to Luke, Tally has begun a relationship with Cowboy. Tally’s insistence on witnessing the birth speaks, perhaps, to a moment in the narrative in which she is trying to gather enough information to decide about her future and her body. Is sex worth the risk of labor? Is a relationship with Cowboy that might result in childbirth worth pursuing? Tally’s decision-making happens off the page; this reflects that Tally must keep her decisions so private she can share them with only Cowboy, not even with her family. She chooses to give up her birth family to pursue a life up north with Cowboy—a life in which she has more autonomy than she ever could in Black Oak.
Kathleen Chandler
Kathleen Chandler, Luke’s mother, is a static secondary character and a supportive parent to Luke. Kathleen’s background is different from that of the other Chandlers. Luke notes that she “had been raised on a small town at the very edge of Black Oak, so she was almost a town girl. She actually grew up with kids who were too good to pick cotton” (21). The “almost” in his description is a telling word—it speaks to the liminality of Kathleen’s experience of class before marrying into the Chandler family. Though she also came from a farming family, Kathleen’s proximity to wealthier families has given her the aspiration to one day leave farming as a profession. This is not an ambition shared by any of the other Chandlers, but one she desperately hopes to encourage in Luke.
Kathleen is a cultivator both literally and metaphorically. Throughout the novel, she is closely associated with the vegetable garden that she retreats to whenever she can’t stand being in the house. She also helps cultivate new life by aiding the delivery of Libby’s child. Most crucially, though, Kathleen cultivates specific instincts and drives in Luke as he figures out how to deal with the difficulties of his world. For instance, Pappy unilaterally announces that the family will be cut off from visiting town on Saturdays following the Sisco murder. When Luke questions his decision Kathleen, rather than admonishing her son, only grins at him. Here, Kathleen navigates complicated familial dynamics; she doesn’t contradict Pappy by outright encouraging Luke’s behavior, but she still gives Luke the signal that she approves of his desire for independence and desire to connect with the world beyond the farm. Kathleen’s silent smile reappears as the image that closes the novel. Over the course of the narrative, she successfully cultivates in her husband and child the desire to leave Black Oak for good, and the ending indicates that she’s pleased with her family’s progress.
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