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| Plot Summary of Bastard Out of Carolina |
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"Born to an unwed fifteen-year-old mother, Ruth Anne Boatwright, better known as Bone, comes from from a dirt-poor family in Greenville County, South Carolina in the 1950's. Her family is known to be trash throughout the county; her uncles are foul-mouthed men who drink and shoot up each other's trucks, but are essentially good at heart; her aunts are women aged beyond their years by hard times; and her numerous cousins are all fun-loving goofballs who have their brief stints in jail or getting into other mischief of their own. And despite the poverty, Bone and her mother, Anney, share a loving relationship that seems impossible to destroy...at first...
Then Daddy Glen enters the picture. At first, he is loving to Bone and her little sister. To Anney, he would make the perfect father for her two "beautiful little girls". But after having had one man run out on her and having another die, she finds it hard to trust men. It isn't long, however, before Anney begins to trust Glen and they are married.
Unfortunately for Anney and the girls, Glen can't seem to keep a job. The stress of him getting fired from one job after another, his cruel father's contempt for him, and then his insane jealousy over Bone begins to really eat away at him. At first, it starts off with his running his hands over Bone, but then a monster replaces the man Anney had fallen in love with. For no apparent reason, he will see fit to drag Bone into the bathroom and whip her degradingly. Though Anney knows about this, she loves Glen too much to leave him.
Bone is by now convinced that she isn't worth anything, that she's trash...just something to be "used up and thrown away". She is afraid to let anybody else know of the intense abuse, as she's convinced it's her fault and that she deserves whatever she has coming to her. Even after her relatives find out about the abuse and the uncles go after Daddy Glen to defend her, she is still convinced it is her fault.
"I could never hate you," she tells her mother, who blatantly stood by whilst the girl was being beaten.
Maybe she could never hate her mother then, but then Daddy Glen shows up at her aunt's house (where she is staying for the time being to help her aunt around the house) one day. He literally beats her bloody, gets on top of her, and then rapes her. And even after Anney catches him red-handed, she still chooses him over her child, the very girl who promised she would never hate her own mother.
There is no happy ending to this story. It isn't a Cinderella/sweet baby/rainbows and kittens ending. Dorothy Allison writes with stark prose and bluntness. It isn't always a fairytale, despite what you might see in some children's novels on the topic.
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Megan, Resident Scholar
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" Ruth Anne Boatwright, nicknamed Bone, is the narrator and the bastard of Dorothy Allison's "Bastard Out of Carolina." Beginning with her birth during an automobile accident and her mother's attempts to get the red inked block letters of illegitimacy removed from her birth certificate, she chronicles her childhood in Greenville until she is almost thirteen. Bone's family is “working class,” others would probably call them white trash.
Bone looks at a school bus filled with children she hates because she knows they are looking down on her. She resents her step father's family because she recognizes that they treat her and her sister like trash. The sheriff, the manager of Woolworths, the nurse at the hospital, even when they seem to acting nicely are demeaning in their condescension. Bone's response is to steal candy from Woolworth's, befriending the albino Shannon Pearl who is even more of an outsider than she is, and daydreaming of gospel music stardom.
But in the end it is in her family that she must find comfort and safety. The problem for Bone is that in her case the safety net fails. Her step father, Daddy Glen, is both a child batterer and a molester. Her mother, unaware at first of the molesting and torn by her love for both, at first accepts his reasons for the beatings, until by the end of the novel she is forced to choose between the two."
Jack Goodstein, Resident Scholar
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| Review Analysis of Bastard Out of Carolina |
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Our unique search engine provides a wealth of detail about books by breaking them down into many different literary elements, all of which are searchable (click here).
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Tone of book?
- depressed
Time/era of story
- 1930's-1950's
Kids growing up/acting up?
Yes
Poverty, surviving
Yes
Kind of living:
- general poverty story
Family, struggle with
Yes
Struggle with:
- Father (or standin)
Is this an adult or child's book?
- Adult or Young Adult Book
Age group of kid(s) in story:
- grade school
Parents/lack of parents problem?
- molestation - unpleasant gift from daddy
Main Character
Gender
- Female
Profession/status:
- student
Age:
- a kid
Is this an ordinary person caught up in events?
Yes
Ethnicity/Nationality
- White (American)
How sensitive is this character?
- sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor
- Strong but gentle sense of humor
- Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence
- Average intelligence
Physique
- average physique
Main Adversary
Identity:
- Male
Age:
- 20's-30's
- 40's-50's
Profession/status:
- unemployed
Eccentric/Smart/Dumb:
Yes
Eccentric:
- emotionally unstable
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in:
- an average amount
How sensitive is this character?
- mean, arrogant
Sense of humor
- Cynical sense of humor
Intelligence
- Dumb
- Average intelligence
Physique
- average physique
Setting
How much descriptions of surroundings?
- 6 ()
United States
Yes
The US:
- Southeast
- Deep South
Style
Person
- mostly 1st
Accounts of torture and death?
- generic/vague references to death/punishment
Sex in book?
Yes
What kind of sex:
- descript of kissing
- touching of anatomy
- rape/molest (yeech!)
Amount of dialog
- mostly dialog
- roughly even amounts of descript and dialog
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Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s). | |
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