Summary Of Bastard Out Of Carolina

The major issues in Bastard Out of Carolina include poverty, illegitimacy, and the physical and sexual abuse of a child. The Boatwright’s are shown to be living in poverty by having to many children, the men fighting and drinking, living in run-down houses, wearing hand me down clothes, and how the town treats the them. Ruth Anne “Bone” Boatwright illegitimacy can also be considered a product of their poverty. Bone’s mother Anney tries her best to procure a birth certificate that doesn’t have illegitimate stamped on it. The main major issue is the physical and sexual abuse of a child. This is shown through Glen Waddell’s violent treatment of Bone.

It was hard to pick out the major characters in Bastard Out of Carolina as they all seemed to

She is the illegitimate child of fifteen yr. old Anney Boatwright. Bone is an intellectually curious, intense, angry girl. She become the focus of her mother’s second husband, Glen Waddell, rage and jealousy and he proceeds to physically and sexually abuse her. Due to this she becomes independent, defiant, and sexually precocious but, at the same time blames herself for Glen’s actions. At the end Bone becomes more mature and realizes that she must cut ties with her mother to save her own life. Anney Boatwright was one of eight children. She became an uneducated, underemployed, and unwed mother at fifteen. By nineteen she was a widow with two children. Desperately looking for love and a stable family life she marries Glen Waddell believing he would be good to her and her two girls. Even when it smacks her in the face she refuses to acknowledge Glen’s cruelty and abuse to Bone’s and instead blames the young girl for it. In the first half of the book Anney is independent and determined as shown when she repeatedly tries to get the illegitimate stamp off Bone’s birth certificate. But, later becomes weak, helpless, and cruel. She chose to run off with Glen instead of helping Bone heal from Glen’s abuse.

Family is clearly matters to the Boatwrights although they are not like other families. Even through the abuse Bone clung to a dream of having a loving family wanting “us to be like the families in the books in the library.” Storytelling is used to shape the characters identities. Bone learns the Boatwright history through exaggerated stories from Granny and Aunt Ruth. She explores the dark emotions caused by the abuse through stories she tells her cousins. By narrating her childhood experiences, she transforms from the victim of the story into the author of the story. This novel is an example of the redemptive power of storytelling. Intersectionality is the study of how different forms of oppression combine and reinforce one another. This is shown as Bone’s gender shapes her experience of poverty and her working-class background shapes her identity as a woman. It also briefly touches on the ways race and poverty collide. The Boatwright Legacy is a force of nature and they can never escape their toxic patterns. At the end of the novel Bone reflects on Anney’s life and faded dreams before deciding that Bone was already part of the Boatwright’s tragic destiny. Bone says, “I was who I was going to be, someone like her, like Mama, a Boatwright woman.” Being a Boatwright is both a blessing and a curse. Guilt and Blame is shown as they spiral through Bone even though she’s innocent of any wrongdoing. Anney is guilty and to blame because she