"Barack Obama strikes at the heart of our deepest insecurities. He is a good father while many of us aren’t. He wears suits to his job while we wear overalls, if we’re lucky enough to have a job at all. His wife tells us that we shouldn’t be feeding our children certain foods, and we hate her for it—not because we think she’s wrong but because we know she’s right."
Vance speaks on the separation of the hillbillies from the more prosperous people in America, such as Barack Obama. He elaborates on how Obama is everything the typical hillbilly is not: a good father, upper-class, upwardly mobile, and well-spoken. The quote is meant to speak to the socioeconomic gap that is present in America, and how the working-class cannot relate to its own government anymore, as figures like the president are alienating to them. This ties into Vance's larger argument that the working-class people of the Rust Belt, the South, and Appalachia are largely distrustful of societal institutions, thereby discouraging them from trying to make better decisions.
“Psychologists call it 'learned helplessness' when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life.”
This quote speaks to J.D.'s journey throughout the entire book. Vance talks about how the hillbillies of Middletown, Ohio, and the surrounding areas have given up hope, as they know that the odds are against them. So, why bother? Vance is the exception, as he never gives in to the hopelessness that encompasses his entire community and makes it as unsuccessful, poor, and socially decayed as it is, and thus transcends the hillbilly roots that hold him back.
“Pajamas? Poor people don’t wear pajamas. We fall asleep in our underwear or blue jeans. To this day, I find the very notion of pajamas an unnecessary elite indulgence, like caviar or electric ice cube makers.”
This quote discusses the sharp difference in perception between the working class and upper classes as far as what the poor need. Pajamas are a luxury item in a sense, and Vance talks about how people like him would have considered such items "elite indulgences." Instead of pajamas or books, both practical items that the wealthy often purchase for their children at Christmas, Vance's family would find the most expensive, trendy toys to give as presents because they believed that's what defined a happy Christmas amongst families who were economically successful. This points to the trend of conspicuous consumption amongst working-class families (in other words, the phenomenon that poor people often spend their money on flashy items so that they might appear wealthy to their family and the community).
"But yeah, like everyone else in our family, they could go from zero to murderous in a fucking heartbeat.”
This specific quote, while obscene, describes every major character in the text perfectly, especially Mamaw. Every person Vance describes in his life is incredibly headstrong and will dive into things with no thought, but simply rage. They don't think about the consequences of their actions, they just act. It's who they are. To hillbillies, according to Vance, sticking up for one's family and one's honor is worth whatever consequences one receives as a result of fighting. Of course, later in life, Vance revises this lesson, learning that he must act as the one who breaks the tradition of violence in his family if he is ever to have a successful life.
“There is nothing lower than the poor stealing from the poor. It's hard enough as it is. We sure as hell don't need to make it even harder on each other.”
Throughout the text, Vance brings up the level of poverty and the character of the hillbillies, and this quote sums up the attitude of the entire community towards an implicit code of honor. Mamaw condemns stealing from other poor families, as she believes in an unspoken code of honor shared by all working-class hillbillies, without which there is nothing to bind this community together. To illustrate her point, Mamaw, true to her word even from a young age, shot a man trying to steal her family's cow at the age of twelve. Her words here introduce the cyclical nature of crime and violence in these towns in Appalachia, and how the working-class community that Mamaw and Papaw once believed in is crumbling due to social and moral decay.
“There are no villains in this story. There’s just a ragtag band of hillbillies struggling to find their way—both for their sake and, by the grace of God, for mine.”
Closing the introduction of Vance's book, these words provide the reader with a lens through which to view the myriad of characters in Vance's life. Although Vance portrays a few of the characters as near angelic (such as his wife, Usha, and his Aunt Wee and Uncle Jimmy), most of the characters in the novel have at least somewhat dubious relationships to morality. For instance, we have Mamaw, who in addition to lighting her husband on fire for drinking alcohol, shot a man at the age of twelve. Of course, there's also Vance's mother, who became addicted to drugs and threatened, or even physically harmed, the people in her life all too often. This list of "ragtag...hillbillies," of course, includes Vance himself, who admits he still struggles with a hair-trigger temper he was trained to have ready in case of conflict as a child.
Always the diplomat, Vance includes this caveat to the cast of lively characters in his book as a warning to the reader, discouraging him or her from passing judgment on any of the people in his life. After all, so many of the problematic actions people such as Mamaw take are to advance Vance's chances in life, and, "by the grace of God," they work.
“If the problems start in Jackson, it is not entirely clear where they end. What I realized many years ago, watching that funeral procession with Mamaw, is that I am a hill person. So is much of America’s white working class. And we hill people aren't’ doing very well.”
This quote refers to the moment in which Vance asks his Mamaw why people in Kentucky stood every time a funeral procession passed by their houses. Mamaw answers, "Because, honey, we're hill people. And we respect our dead." Mamaw's answer fits into a prominent theme in Vance's book: that hillbillies have a highly developed sense of their own honor code, and part of that code demands respect of one another's family, money, and tragedy. Of course, ironically, Vance also points here to the fact that, despite this highly developed sense of justice and moral fiber, these same "hill people" are the ones shirking their own family, educational, and employment responsibilities, thus rotting their community, respectful though it is, from the inside out.
“But what drove Mamaw’s initial dislike were the parts of him that most resembled her. Mamaw apparently understood what would take me another twenty years to learn: that social class in America isn’t just about money. And her desire that her children do better than she had done extended past their education and employment and into the relationships they formed. When it came to spouses for her kids and parents for her grandkids, Mamaw felt, whether she knew it consciously, that she wasn’t good enough.”
When Vance's mother marries Bob, Mamaw is adamantly opposed to the man because he doesn't measure up to the standards she has set in giving her daughter a better life. However, Vance believes that Mamaw hates Bob so much because he reminds her of herself. Like Mamaw and her family, Bob drank too much soda (and had the cavities to prove it) and had a working-class job as a trucker, just like Mamaw's brother, Pet. This is a disappointment to Mamaw since she believed that because Papaw got a good job at Armco, her children would advance to a middle-class position and marry accordingly. Thus, Vance refers here to Mamaw's unflinching belief in the American Dream and her own family's upward mobility. Little does she know, the family's habit of violence would actually stall this upward mobility for a generation, complicating their pure belief in the American Dream of upward mobility.
“If Mamaw’s second God was the United States of America, then many people in my community were losing something akin to a religion."
Vance details the widespread loss of faith in the cultural institutions that made Americans believe they were living in the best country in the world following World War II. They cannot relate to Barack Obama, for example, because he looks and talks so differently from anyone they know, and they resent him for it. The average hillbilly living in the Rust Belt or Appalachia had virtually no heroes to look up to, and two virtually unwinnable wars (the Iraq and Afghanistan wars) were draining the country of its young men, wealth, and hope. Thus, the patriotism that so many working-class people in the middle of the country had grown up believing in was crumbling. For people like Mamaw, this wasn't just a political crisis—it was a crisis of faith as severe as if they were to cease believing in the Christian God. Such a loss of faith in society's institutions, Vance believes, has devastated the average American's hope for upward mobility and prosperity—in other words, they have nothing to which to aspire.
“I was happy about where I was and overwhelmingly hopeful about the future. For the first time in my life, I felt like an outsider in Middletown. And what turned me into an alien was my optimism.”
Vance's journey takes an ironic turn near the end of the book, as his path to Yale Law School triggers a sense that he no longer fully belongs in either his current or past worlds. The path we chart throughout the novel, perhaps the sole glue holding Vance's narrative together, is his journey from the bloody, working-class environment of Appalachia and the Rust Belt to the prestigious Yale University. And, like Vance, we blindly assume that if Vance can succeed despite the many obstacles holding him back from upward mobility, his life will be better. However, Vance learns that this is not completely the case. One way in which attending Yale complicates his life is that he no longer feels as if he belongs in his own home. Returning to Middletown, where he grew up, Vance finds that the optimism he nurtured as he progresses all the way to Yale is actually an anomaly in the Rust Belt community he loves, as the people there have learned to be pessimistic about their futures. Although Vance notes that the cause of this pessimism cannot be isolated to one factor, it is certainly a trait that holds back hillbillies like him from achieving the middle-class life their parents believed was possible for them. On a personal level, as a result of the palpable pessimism in his community, Vance begins to feel that, just as he feels like a hillbilly imposter at Yale, he is an elite imposter in his hometown.
