I was struck by how much this work conveyed to me in a non-literary sense. It was like the experience of a poem – where the words are creating a feeling, sometimes more than a clear narrative – but throughout an entire book, which seems to be an impressive feat. I think Agee and Walker’s use of text shape and pause were incredibly successful in creating evocative moments.

There were two clear emotions that I pulled out of this work. The first was an intense sense of being an outsider. Even in the Preface, I was struck by how the authors seems to feel like their subjects were almost an alien species. The scenes on p.31 and p.42, which both involve the authors surveying “normal” people, make clear the enormous tension and awkwardness they felt while trying to observe. The result was a painful reading experience for me.

The second emotion I felt came from the character of Emma, who is a joyful character with a tragic fate. It seems like her role in the narrative is to be a yet-untarnished, optimistic young woman who is dragged away from her family by her older husband and seems destined for a depressing existence. She seems to epitomize that in this harsh reality, nothing truly alive will last. Her future is my worst nightmare,

I also wanted to note a quote about art from the beginning of the work that I really enjoyed and that I am honestly still pondering: “’Above all else: in God’s name don’t think of it as Art. Every fury on earth has been absorbed in time, as art, or as religion, or as authority in one form or another. The deadliest blow the enemy of the human soul can strike is to do fury honor.”