33 pages • 1 hour read
Charles W. ChesnuttThe Sheriff's Children
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1889A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Railroads and Highways
In “The Sheriff’s Children,” Charles W. Chesnutt employs the imagery of railroads and highways to represent progress, juxtaposing the stagnant nature of Branson County with the advancement of the outside world. He contrasts the “staid” and “sequestered district […] remote from railroads” with the “enterprise” of towns touched by modernity (131). Chesnutt illuminates the ways in which railroads bring the “fresh blood of civilization” to the “social corpse” (132), thus revitalizing a State, supporting industry, promoting social change, and providing economic stimulation. In this way, railroads and highways symbolize the benefit of outside influences, Branson County’s lack of them reflecting its relative bloodlessness. As railroads and highways were repaired during Reconstruction, they allude to associated governmental efforts to correct racial persecution and support integration. These modes of travel and the potential enlightenment are emblematic of the freedom and escape denied to Black people in the South. Chesnutt highlights the advantages of humanmade machines, spurned during the Romantic Period in favor of the natural world, juxtaposing these with the “rich growth of moss” upon “weather-beaten houses, innocent of paint” now tied to decay (131). The town, in its “innocence,” has missed out on the animating influence of progress. The “shade trees around the court house (132)” allude to the city’s obsolete legal practices, and the “yellow dog, dozing away the hours […], reluctantly yielding up his place in the middle of the dusty road (132)” alludes to the town’s attempt to deny progress in favor of neglect.
Water
Chesnutt uses water imagery to symbolize the impact of the war and its potential for change and enlightenment. While the “fierce tide of war […] rushed through the cities,” Branson County, remote from “navigable streams,” remains relatively untouched, maintaining the “sluggish current of life” characteristic of this region (131). Chesnutt ties the power of the war to the power of the sea, Sherman’s army passing Branson County on its “march to the sea,” the war “raging” “all along the seaboard,” the “thunder of its cannon” only faintly “disturb[ing] the echoes” of the county (131). Branson County never has to confront the “burden of taxation, the doubt and uncertainty of the conflict, and sting of ultimate defeat”; this “rob[s] misfortune of half its sharpness,” the town sinking into a deadening “apathy” (131). Similarly, Chesnutt compares the “navigable streams” of the outside world with the “steady stream of curious observers” (133) visiting Captain Walker. Unlike the “navigable streams” that, like the railroads and highways, symbolize progress and change, the “stream” of people that visits Captain Walker seeks to accomplish the opposite, namely the solidifying of old systems and social dynamics. In this way, Branson County is shown to be subject to the “tide of public opinion” (136). It is this shared judgment that relegates Tom to the “rice swamps,” the sheriff’s “flood of unaccustomed thoughts” (146) coming too late.
Guns
Chesnutt uses firearms to symbolize power. The Colonel’s knowledge of guns is part of his authority as a military man and sheriff: He distinguishes the “thunder” of the cannons of war from the “crack of some hunter’s rifle” (131), the “sanguinary” horse-pistol carrying a wartime history, and the double-barreled shotgun the sheriff carries to the jail. When the sheriff faces down the mob, it is the combination of his eloquence and his firearm that causes the mob to back down. When Tom “stealthily” steals the weapon from him, a gun that he is prohibited from owning as a Black man, the gun symbolically represents the possibilities for Black upward mobility obtained through the war as well as a practical chance for escape. When Tom wields the gun at the sheriff, he claims his power. Only then does Tom declare himself and claim his name and his parenthood. Tom’s desire to use the weapon reveals a deep personal resentment and a wish for inner freedom rather than physical escape. When Polly shoots Tom with the horse-pistol, she symbolically “wins,” solidifying the hierarchies of race, progenies, and paternal legacy. The optimism Tom carried for a short time is lost, and he yields to his powerlessness and to death.
Death and Decay
Chesnutt uses the motif of death and decay to personify the rotting “social corpse” of the town and its “primitive” and prejudicial politics. He describes the county as “sluggish,” the town as a “deserted village” with “weather-beaten houses” and “dusty road[s],” and the townspeople as “apath[etic]” and “expressionless,” personifying a way of life on its way to becoming irrelevant. Even the animals are half-asleep, “lazy,” “dozing,” and “stunted,” even while making their way along the “principal thoroughfare.” Economically, the town is also dying, its people living off the “dreary sandhills” that provide them “meagre” rations and its money holding questionable value. Contrasted against the “bustling cities,” the “ardent sunshine,” and the symbols of “enterprise” providing the “fresh blood of civilization” (132), Chesnutt paints a picture of a town slowly eroding and emptying of life.
Only the “foul” murder of Captain Walker, a beloved “old veteran” who lost an arm in Gettysburg, enlivens the townspeople. His “rugged face” turned “stiff and cold in death” personifies the once vital but now decaying “social corpse,” and vengeance is a way to revive it (133). As they view Tom’s presence as the danger of outside influences and an “unnatural” racial integration, killing him presents a way to reaffirm a social order in which racial prejudice is the rule. In this way, Tom becomes the scapegoat for the community and the culture at large. Tom acknowledges his only way out is to kill the sheriff, who personifies the law; however, when this fails and he is recaptured, he accepts death, conceding to powerful systems from which there is no escape. In his death, Tom’s body becomes “cold and stiff” (147), mirroring the “stiff and cold” face of the captain (133). Although death is, in some sense, freeing for Tom and “enlivening” for the community, the threat of death strips the sheriff of his power, forcing him out of his ideological fantasies and into survival mode. In light of this, the sheriff changes his ideology, privileging his moral duties over his social ones.
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By Charles W. Chesnutt
