Nostalgia and the Ricketts

I’d like to play with a point Kaelin about the pictures at the Ricketts: “Pictures of people participating in activities that the Ricketts cannot personally identify with were, perhaps, hung in unrequited desire.” I think the pictures extend further in meaning than that. The pictures are reminders, and they are quite possibly there in unrequited desire; however, I think they serve more as nostalgic reminders than anything else. As Agee iterates, the Ricketts, with their nine children and ten dollar a day wages, live in a deplorable state (103). Yet, years before, when the Ricketts parents were relatively healthy and the children fewer in number, the Ricketts were “almost prosperous” (104).  They owned ten cows, they lived near a stream, and they owned mules. A string of unfortunate occurrences landed them in their current state. Everything about this state is a nostalgic reminder of past splendor.

I mean, if you look at their house as a whole, it is not the house of a tenant or sharecropper, it is a house that once belonged to a small farmer, a land owner. The fireplace also used to be splendid,  “broad and high, and handsome in its Greek panelings” (174). Everything is a reminder of something that was once nice, and is now falling apart. So, as a distraction, the Ricketts paste pretty reminders on their walls, pictures of “Coca-Cola girls” and “great rosy blue-eyed babies sucking their thumbs.” The pictures remind them that they were once nice, that they are now falling apart. But there was a time when they could afford some of the things in the pictures, and I’m sure those times are vivid memories, tasting like yesterday on their tongues. The Woods and the Gudgers were never in a situation where they had any of the things the Ricketts once had, so they can hardly miss them. But the Ricketts, unless they find some sort of prosperity once again, will always remain active admirers (174). 

-Jessica Grabert