Take Home Essay

In this essay I compare and contrast Cade Bambara's Grandaddy Cain and Jesse Stuart's Luster (Pa) Sexton.

Grandaddy Cain lives on a farm in the south with pecan barrels, trees, flowers, printed stones, and his family. Luster (Pa) Sexton also lives on a farm in the south, however it lacks electricity, has cattle, and a well.

Mr. Cain wears field boots and black oil skin. He has white hair and stands tall and quiet like a king. He is big enough to hold a small child on his hand. It is said that Grandaddy has “engines in his feet and motors in his hands”. Instead of being called a waiter among some folks Mr. Cain is titled “The Waiter”. Similarly in farm boy fashion , Mr. Sexton wears baggy and wrinkled overalls, big boots laced in the front with buckskin, socks protruding above the tops of his boots, a blue work shirt peeking over his sheepskin coat and a worn out black hat hiding his gray-streaked black hair. Pa's hands are gnarled like the roots of an elm tree. His face is brown and weather beaten; it turns red when he is mad. When he stood inside the school house “he looked like a leaf turned brown on the tree among the treetop filled with growing leaves”.

Grandaddy and Pa are both very protective of their families. Pa worries that Dave, his son, is not getting an education. Meanwhile, Grandaddy Cain is fretful that his family's space is being invaded upon. When their families are threatened they tend to become slightly violent in nature. Grandaddy Cain ripped a camera apart and Luster threatened a man with his gun. Of course nothing came from these encounters, no blood shed, which hints towards a kind heart in each of the men.

They are farm workers at heart and are stubborn in their own ways. Luster and Grandaddy are elderly. Pa had eleven children; Mr. Cain also had kids.

Originally Pa thinks that you should only teach children out of the books and not hands on. Eventually, he envisions that time has passed him up and there are better ways of teaching. However, he doesn't change his mind about one thing; if you don't beat your child with a switch then the child will become soft and spoiled. Luster believes that you can beat a child until they're twenty-one. Grandaddy doesn't like people messing with his family. He dislikes intruders and would like to be left alone with his family members.