Summary
Although Mamaw and Papaw’s adjustment to family life was, on the face of it, smooth, a closer look revealed conflict and tumult. After the birth of their first child, Vance’s Uncle Jimmy, Mamaw suffered a series of miscarriages but finally gave birth to Vance’s mother, Bev, followed by their final child, Lori. Vance admits he believes Mamaw’s miscarriages might have been the result of stress caused by Papaw’s heavy drinking during that time. Nevertheless, the family’s “outward public life” fit society’s image of the average upwardly mobile, middle-class family. Vance’s uncle even recalled watching the 1950s sitcom “Leave it to Beaver” on TV and noting the resemblance between Beaver’s idyllic middle-class family and his own.
Under the surface, however, the family was a far cry from a 50s sitcom. On one hand, Papaw’s drinking, spending, and carousing inspired fear amongst his wife and children. One year, he brought home two new cars—a Chevrolet convertible and a plush Oldsmobile—in two months, telling Mamaw he “traded for it.” As children, Vance’s mother and aunt would watch their father park his car when arriving home from work, and if it was parked straight, the evening would proceed normally, with a peaceful family dinner. But if he parked his car crooked, it meant he was drinking, and sometimes Bev and Lori would run out the back door, staying the night with a friend of Mamaw’s.
Often, Papaw’s carousing was actually initiated and encouraged by Mamaw’s brothers, who, having grown up with Papaw, viewed him more as a brother than a brother-in-law. Mamaw took these betrayals especially hard, as she saw family disloyalty as a cardinal sin. Although family members were permitted to settle their conflicts in the worst ways possible amongst themselves, the minute they shared information about those conflicts with the outside world, Mamaw would react. “‘In five years you won’t even remember his goddamned name. But your sister is the only true friend you’ll ever have,’” said Mamaw to Vance once.
Admittedly, Vance notes, Mamaw’s sober temper matched and egged on Papaw’s drunken one. For example, when Papaw would fall asleep on the couch after a night of heavy drinking, Mamaw would cut slits in his pants so they would burst at the seams when he stood up. In another instance, when Papaw arrived home from work and demanded a freshly made dinner, Mamaw cooked him a pile of garbage.
Their worst dispute, however, came when Mamaw warned her husband that if he came home drunk one more time, she’d kill him. A week later, when Papaw arrived home drunk and fell asleep on the couch, Mamaw dutifully covered him in gasoline and lit a match. Their daughter put out the fire, and Papaw only received mild burns from the incident.
Eventually, Mamaw and Papaw’s marriage fell apart, but Vance notes that even during this low point for the family, their optimism about their children’s future piece of the American Dream never waned. Vance sees this as a naive attitude, however, as all three of Mamaw and Papaw’s children were deeply affected by their chaotic childhood home life. Their son, Jimmy, followed in Papaw’s footsteps by getting a job at Armco immediately after graduating high school. Lori nearly overdosed on PCP with her high school boyfriend, dropped out, and married into an abusive relationship—not unlike Mamaw and Papaw’s had been.
Both children eventually got their lives back on track, and even Mamaw and Papaw reached relative harmony when Mamaw moved to a separate house and Papaw quit drinking. But Vance’s mother would not be so lucky. After giving birth to Vance’s sister, Lindsay, she would become a freshly divorced, 18-year-old single mother, leaving Mamaw and Papaw to step in and raise her children.
Analysis
The end of the previous chapter foreshadowed family discord, and Chapter Three dives into that discord full throttle. This chapter is also a more personal one for Vance, departing with the first two chapters, which alternate between family stories and sociological observations. Here, Vance instead allows us a voyeuristic window into the Vance family’s struggle to adjust to life in Middletown, with few of the digressions into how that struggle fits into broader cultural trends, as Vance conditioned us to expect in Chapters one and two.
This shift in focus brings with it a shift in tone: this chapter invites us to watch as the larger-than-life characters with illustrious hillbilly histories attempt to trade in those traditions for a chance at a sitcom-ready, middle-class life. The results are mixed but mostly unsuccessful, as Papaw’s new, well-paying job at Armco ushers in a whole host of problems that Mamaw and Papaw’s ancestors would’ve considered luxuries (i.e. alcoholism, conspicuous consumption, etc). At the same time, Mamaw and Papaw’s relationship problems are inherited ones, leftovers from a long tradition of violence—a tradition of which Vance is “proud,” but which also sends shockwaves of shame throughout the family. Thus, the shift in tone is from picaresque and lively to sobering and ironic.
Thus, Vance introduces another theme that we will follow throughout the book: the vicious circle of intrafamilial violence. In many ways, Mamaw and Papaw’s move from hillbilly Jackson, Kentucky to the civilized, middle-class world of Middletown, Ohio feels like a new beginning for the Vance family, and in some ways, it is: the family enjoys material prosperity like never before. Even so, it is clear that this “new beginning” is fraught with trigger-hair tempers and penchants for violence, no doubt inherited from family traditions like that of the Hatfields and the McCoys. It’s all in the family, but that’s the problem.
In turn, Mamaw and Papaw’s children experience new versions of these brutalities. Whereas the family’s history of violence largely inflicted that violence on strangers outside the family, this chapter charts the inversion of that violence inward, made so by the pressure to conform to the lifestyle of their middle-class Ohio neighbors. As a result, Mamaw and Papaw’s children experience this violence concentrated within one household, and Vance does not hold back when tracing the impact of this cruelty on their journeys into adulthood. Ultimately, the reader is left wondering whether the Vances' children will ever escape from this cycle of inherited violence, and thus whether the family is destined to remain stuck in this cycle forever.
Even considering this chapter’s numerous departures from the ones before it, Vance’s voice remains consistent, as he continues to deliver vivid family anecdotes throughout. For example, to illustrate the height of the discord between Mamaw and Papaw, Vance shares the story of Mamaw setting Papaw on fire. This recalls the story of Mamaw shooting a would-be cattle thief at the age of 12 back in Jackson, along with the myriad other stories of colorful family violence Vance has shared up to this point. Brutal though these anecdotes are, Vance’s voice, which balances between grave and vivid, carries the reader through.
