The train, bound by its tracks, schedules, and engineers, was symbolic of the nineteenth century. The Tweedy family’s new Cadillac instantly becomes the talk of the town as it is solid evidence that their once sleepy, bucolic community is now keeping in step with the developments of the twentieth century. Eventually the last sassafras tree is cut down to enlarge the railroad tracks and with the last tree gone the inhabitants of the town decide to change the town’s name to make it more in vogue and marking the end of an era. There were once numerous groves of sassafras trees in the area and in order to modernize and bring economic growth into the community all the trees, save one, were cut down to build a railroad and larger, more modern houses once people started becoming more affluent.

The trees, or rather the gradual disappearance of the trees, is also a metaphor for the town’s development towards modernity. Sassafras trees that used to be plentiful in the area was what gave the town its name and the tree is a metaphor for the town’s past. Miss Love, in contrast with everyone else in Cold Sassy, speaks with a noticeable lack of Southern inflection and doesn’t make use of contractions, making her sound very refined this is also largely due to the fact that she is a newcomer from Baltimore, a Northeastern State, which also earns her the disdainful label of “yankee” from the Southern community. His speech patterns are strongly contrasted with Lightfoot’s speech as she comes from the poorer part of their community.

The novel is narrated by Will Tweedy who makes use of Southern regional dialect. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own.Ī person’s speech-his accent, diction, choice of words-is a clear indication of their educational background and social standing and the novel makes use of a couple of characters to hammer this point across. These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community.

Cold sassy tree