Comparisons between (On the Porch: 1 and (On the Porch: 2

            In Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men he has sections that add as dividers between the different families, which helps to provide some shape to his madness and lack of organization in this non-novel. Even though Agee rarely shares which family he is working with, the hierarchy of poverty within the photographs helps to provide a road map.  I am still trying to decide if the porch from the first section and the porch from the second section are the same or different porches.

            In (On the Porch: 1, Agee barely gives the reader a visual of the porch.  Instead, he describes a room in the house where the family sleeps.  In this section, Agee is aware of the five senses.  He mentions the visuals that he observes from the house and how “there as no longer any sound of the settling or ticking of any part of the structure of the house” (17).  Agee utilizes theses senses to create a sense of peace and openness in comparison to (On the Porch: 2.  In this first section he rambles on while not describing the actual porch.  However, in the middle of the rambling, the reader is given this passage, “The sky was withdrawn from us with all her strength.  Against some scarcely conceivable imprisoning wall this woman held herself away from us and watched us…” (18-19).  Agee possibly personifies the sky to provide a sense of confinement, like the sky is a wall closing in on the porch. 

            In (On the Porch: 2, Agee repeats the line, “We lay on the front porch” (197).  This section actually provides an action and provides a concrete image that is missing in the first section.  Also, in this section the reader is given a physical description of the actual porch, “A light roof stuck out its tongue above us dark and squarely, sustained at its outward edge by the slippery trunks of four young trees from which the bark had been peeled”  “By letting the center of your weight fall far enough on the high side it was possible to effect a compromise by which you had the benefit of a fair amount of the width of the seat and yet were not rolled off it” (197).  In these passages, the confinement from the first section is extremely apparent which makes me think that this may be the same porch.  However, this section gives more description of the actual porch, which makes me think that the porch is different.  Since this section offers more confinement, I feel like it might be in relation to the photographs, following the hierarchy of poverty.