The Futility of Words

In class we have continually asked why Agee wrote this work is such a convoluted manner. What point was he trying to make and why is he so apposed to seeing this book as a novel or work of art? Agee himself attempts to answer these questions in the section entitled On the Porch: 2. Agee begins this section by describing his sleeping conditions and closely detailing what it felt like to wake up after a long night on a hard pallet. However, he quickly transitions into a long diatribe on art and journalism and how neither can adequately portray the truth.

Agee begins this discussion with the realization that George Gudger is unique. Agee states, “George Gudger is a human being, a man, not like any other human being so much as he is like himself” (Agee 232). Agee notes that he could have created a history for George Gudger that, while completely invented, would have most likely revealed Gudger’s character. This would be art. However, Agee reminds us that Gudger is “exactly, down to the last inch and instant, who, what, where, when and why he is. He is in flesh and blood and breathing” (Agee 233). Because George Gudger is a part of the real, unimagined world, his life cannot be made-up. In order to properly represent him, Agee feels the need to reproduce the Gudgers and all of the tenant families as faithfully as possible through unending detail.

This need for adequate representation leads Agee into yet another discussion on the futility of words. Agee artfully asks the reader to reproduce a street using nothing but words. He notes that while you can describe the “materials, forms, colors, bulks, textures, space relations, shapes of light and shade…all this gathers time and weightiness which the street does not of itself have” (Agee 235). This method of writing appears to mimic the writing in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Agee continually berates the reader with unending descriptions that weigh the work down and slows the prose. However, Agee describes this overly detailed writing as naturalistic and states that that is not his intention. Agee ends his rant on words by saying, “I feel sure in advance that any efforts, in what follows, along the lines I have been speaking of, will be failures” (Agee 238). Inevitably, no matter how Agee presents this work, parts of it will resemble art and journalism and posses naturalist ideas. However, by blending these modes of representation and fully addressing the inadequacies each mode posses, Agee allows the readers to question how things are characterized and to ask themselves what is the truth. This overly vigilant way of reading art and literature can then be applied to all representation of the dust bowl and the depression. Through his convoluted writing, Agee stresses the importance of looking past the propaganda and finding what is real.