Tobacco Road Quotes

Quotes

They tell me He takes care of His people, and I’m waiting for Him to take some notice of me. I don’t reckon there’s another man between here and Augusta who’s as bad off as I is.

Jeeter Lester

Jeeter Lester has almost lost his temper and mind. He doesn’t have anything to eat and there are no perspectives for a better future ahead. He did everything he could, he thinks, so that means that it is God’s turn to take care of him, Jeeter, and his family. “It looks like everybody has got goods and credit excepting me. I don’t know why that is, because I always give the good Lord His due. Him and me has always been fair and square with each other.”. Poor man believes that now God is the one who have to pay His debt for Jeeter serving Him, but the fact is that no one will never help man if he wouldn’t help himself. There is no way to rely on someone else because only Jeeter is responsible for his life and everything that happens around him.

All you men is like that. There is a hundred more just like you all around here. None of you is going to do nothing except talk.

Ada

According to the narrative, it is in women’s nature to criticize everything that men say or do. And it is in men’s nature to talk big and do little, well, at least this story is a good example of such people. Jeeter was constantly talking about his ambitions in farming but actually he never even started working for it. In her turn, Ada, as a real woman, reminded her husband what a loser he is; they don’t have even food to eat and he is still just talking and does nothing: “I been listening to you talk about taking up farming again so long I don’t believe nothing you say now. It’s a big old whopping lie”. Ada is disappointed in her husband and in her life. she is convinced that Jeeter will never do what he says because he is too lazy. He is good in talking but rather than in actually doing something.

Though it sometimes looks like a rich man will never help the poor; whereas the poor people will give away everything they has to help somebody who ain’t got nothing. That’s how it looks to me. Don’t seem like it ought to be that way, but I reckon the rich ain’t got no time to fool with us poor folks."

Jeeter Lester

In this quote, the eternal question of the difference between poor and rich arises. Jeeter hopes that he will get some money from the rich farmer to run his own farm. He thinks that this farmer ought to give him, Jeeter some money, because he is rich. Although he thinks that rich people don’t help poor ones, he will give it a shot. The main reason of such selfish behavior of rich people is their money, he thinks. They are too busy with working and earning money that they just don’t have time “to fool” with poor people. Well, this though is quite reasonable but still one of the reasons may be that rich people don’t think that they, hardworking people, have to help those one who don’t want to work and is looking for easy ways of getting money.

Jeeter postponed nearly everything a man could think of, but when it came to plowing the land and planting cotton, he was as persistent as any man could be about such things. He started out each day with his enthusiasm at fever pitch, and by night he was still as determined as ever to find a mule he could borrow and a merchant who would give him credit for seed-cotton and guano.

The narrator

This ironic quote vividly expresses the whole of Jeeter’s life: to be going to do something but never actually do. well, he was the best in this field. His enthusiasm to plow the land and to grow plans never faded away, but, as we can notice, it didn’t lead to any actions as well. He was going through his life with dreams about his own farm and there dreams gave him powers to wake up every morning. There are a lot of such kind of “passive” dreamers, those people, who are too lazy to do anything to realize their dreams. They just hoping that one day everything will magically change and their patience will be rewarded. However, as it happens, patience is not enough for the realization of dreams, one has to work hard to get what one wants.

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