Cold Sassy Tree, By Olive Ann Burns

Literature that touches on a wide range of topics and themes make for excellent novels. Allowing a literary work to have multiple messages creates a greater opportunity for the reader to relate, in turn, allowing it to flourish. Cold Sassy Tree, written by Olive Ann Burns in 1984, set in an early 1900s Georgia, does a phenomenal job of relaying multiple themes to the reader. The book Cold Sassy Tree is successful because of the character’s confrontation with the concepts of death, love, and religion.

The book Cold Sassy Tree centers around Will Tweedy, a fourteen-year-old who is undergoing an abundance of change. Wills grandpa, Rucker Blakeslee’s wife dies and Rucker decides to marry Miss Love Simpson. This is very controversial in the traditional

The main character in the book is a young and impressionable Will Tweedy. He is the perfect choice for the narrator because he remains unbiased to what is going on around him. Wills slow transformation from a boy who is naïve and fickle to a mature young man who knows who he is and what he believes in is something the reader is drawn to as it demonstrates the dynamic element of his character. The genius in Will Tweedy narration of the book comes from his relatable outlook, he may think or say things we have all thought but are too afraid to admit. For example, Will asks miss Love why she married his grandpa, being so blunt this question would have stunned most people. Anyone else in that situation would have been wondering the same thing but probably would have been too timid to say anything. All in all, Wills fearlessness and constant observing brings the book to life. One of the other primary characters in the book is Miss Love, she was my personal favorite. At first one seems to go along with the towns poor judgment of her, assuming she is only after Rucker Blakeslee for his money, but later learns she is very likable. Miss Love has ideas about women’s rights that are very new to the people of Cold Sassy. She embodies the element of the new era this book tries to portray. She is forward thinking and she is most often seen with new things to that time like

Although Burns writing style is not specific to either initiation or the circular pattern one may feel it pulls more toward the circular side. The reason I say this is by the end of the novel Rucker Blakeslee had learned to be a bit more loving and forgiving and Will had learned how to be more mature and though. At the beginning of the novel these are switched around but because these two characters spend so munch time together the best parts of each of their personalities rub off on each other. To sum up, the characters of the novel have come full circle, so to speak by the end of the