Sweetgrass Mary Alice Monroe

SweetgrassMary Alice Monroe Drew Denton

Sweetgrass is significant, for it acts as the central metaphor of the novel, driving it’s major themes.

Major themes in Sweetgrass • Family • Death/ Life • Deception/ Truth • Love/ Heartbreak • Culture • Habitat • Race Relations • Struggle of past vs. present

Mama June Preston Hamlin Nan Morgan Adele Hank Chas Harry The Blakely Family

With the death of Hamlin, the Blakely family also appears to die.“Her brother had been so alive! A natural storyteller with a joke or a quip always dangling at his tongue. Everything had changed after he was gone. To this day, she mourned.”-Nan, p. 51

However, each will find life again through Sweetgrass.

Nan In Nan’s search for happiness, she drifts further away from Sweetgrass, and in doing so, loses her self-identity. *Nan marries Hank and succumbs to the ethos of her husband. • “That day she’d told her father that she’d decided to follow her husband’s wishes and sell the fifty coastal acres deeded to her at her marriage. Hank had brokered a deal with a development firm and it had been a major boost to his career in real estate.” -Nan, 53 • With the selling of Sweetgrass, Nan sold her identity. • To her father’s mind, selling the family land had severed her tie to the family. Her father cast her from the status of an “us” to a “them” in his polarized vision of the world.” -Nan, 53

Nan • Nan re-claims her identity found in Sweetgrass. • “Don’t you see? Sweetgrass isn’t just real estate. You can’t measure its worth in dollars and cents. It’s our home. It’s who we are. It’s where we’re from. I’m afraid of what will happen to us if we lose it. That’s what’s at stake here, don’t you see? That’s what I want for my sons.”-Nan, 308

Morgan “He could mark the day-eighteen years earlier-when the joy in living ended, but he didn’t want to go into that with his father right now.”- Morgan, 351

Morgan * Morgan seeks refuge in Montana, but finds no answers. * “The answers he sought were not on the open road, nor in the mountains in Montana. This he’d learned today while sitting at his father’s side…..the excuses had burned clean away and he’d realized that the answers he sought were here, at Sweetgrass, with his father.” Morgan, 60. *Morgan takes on the role of Preston and has an epiphany-like moment. • “Morgan was struck, suddenly and fiercely, by what his father had been struggling to do all these years. Saving Sweetgrass was more than saving a family piece of land. Those three hundred acres between highway and marsh were an oasis of green space in this rolling desert of development.”p. 248

Mama June • Representative of the family • “I can’t separate the decision of what I want to do for myself from what I must do for the family. To my mind-and to your father’s-the Blakely’s are Sweetgrass.” -Mama June, 46 • Experiences from her past, cause distance in Mama June’s present relationship with Preston. • “Mama June knew that with the that decision made so many years ago, made with all good intentions, Mary June Clark had begun weaving the elaborate web of lies and silences that would blind her in the silken threads of deception for years to come.”- Mama June, 269

Mama June • “Yet in the twilight of her life, she’d come to realize that the people who truly mattered were the precious few who had stood by her through the worst times and the best. They were at her table tonight. She felt Preston squeeze her hand, and looking up, she knew that his thoughts were running in the same vein. With a resounding “Amen!” hands were released as one by one they reached for the serving bowls. Laughter sang out from the porch as the feast was passed from person to person as quickly as the stories.” - Mama June, 322

Preston • Preston epitomizes Sweetgrass. • “ In the year’s past, he used to relish these waning hours of the day, just rocking and watching the sun set over Sweetgrass, knowing that, at least for one more day, he’d kept the Blakely heritage intact.”- Preston, 20 • Preston’s passion for Sweetgrass is overbearing, and in the midst of salvaging his heritage, he loses his family. • “He’d always felt it was his duty as the last remaining Blakely male to try to hold on to what was left so that a Blakely would always have a place to call home.” -Preston, 21 • “Mama June’s words came back to him: Will our children weep when we’re gone?” Preston, 21

The House • The physical appearance of the house often parallels the feelings of the family. • “His worried brow told her he’d noticed how the once-lustrous creamy walls had darkened to a dusky gray and how the silk on the antique chairs was as threadbare as the festoons of curtains that flowed to the frayed carpeting on the stairs, worn in spots to the wood.” -Morgan, 34

The Bennetts • Nona • Elmore • Maize • Kwame • Grace

Nona Bennett • An agent of the past, and a constant reminder that Sweetgrass is more than property, but symbolic of Bennett history,culture, and a reminder that sweetgrass, as a resource, is diminishing. • “Our family’s been born and buried on Sweetgrass land near as long as the Blakely’s have. This land is our history, too. And the sweetgrass that grows here is as dear to me as it was to my mother and her mother before her. Maybe more so, as the grass is fast disappearing from these parts. Our family’s been pulling grass on this land since time was. Making sweetgrass baskets is part of our culture. I don’t want my grandchildren to forget their heritage. That’s why I’m teaching you how to make the baskets. It’s part of who we came from. Even if your mama don’t care to.” -Nona, 82

The Bennetts Sweetgrass is not only the root of their history, but the source of independence for Nona’s family. • “Just who do you think you’re calling a slave, child?” • “But your great-something-grandmother chose to stay on as hired labor. They worked hard and saved smart and bought themselves a good piece of land from the Blakely’s for fifty cents an acre. That’s the land that we, and the other heirs, are living on even to this day. This land is where are roots are. This is our history.” -Nona, 80 • Sweetgrass baskets * “I’ll teach Grace, and Grace will teach her daughters, and so it will continue,” Nona said. “From one generation to the next. Mother to daughter. Father to son. God willing.”- Nona, 175 • “What we put aside today are tomorrow’s treasures. And I think right now you need to make a basket, Mary June. Weaving these grasses together will do you good.” Nona, 379

The Bennetts and Blakelys • The Bennett’s and Blakely’s are entwined, like the grasses of a Sweetgrass basket. • “Maize, your family and mine have been entwined together for hundreds of years,” Morgan said to her. “I’m not proud of all that’s transpired in that history, but I’ll tell you this. Fate is having the last laugh, because all these years later, both of our families are about to lose this land for the same reasons-taxes and family members wanting to sell.” -Morgan, 411

The cemetery setting parallels the feelings of both families. Both families find Sweetgrass sacred. And here, they are physically honoring the past, which is producing the present resource of sweetgrass. Through the preservation of Sweetgrass, Monroe has also preserved family, culture, and habitat. • “Elmore led them through the dense woods toward the light of a clearing. As they drew nearer to the sweetgrass field, however, a reverential hush fell upon the group. The crunch of their footfall sounded noisily against the woodland quiet. Mama June felt as though they were entering a great temple filled with light. In her mind, the souls of the departed rose up to greet them. They were entering sacred ground.” - Mama June, 429

Sweetgrass Mary Alice Monroe