Ben P. Robertson

Professor Robertson

English 2206, World Literature II (11:00 a.m.)

23 December 2076

“The Serene Fragrance of Many Years”:

Finding Permanence in Southern Conflict in Red Hills and Cotton

The year before his death in a plane crash in 1943, South Carolina writer Ben Robertson published Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory. On the surface, the book comprises Robertson’s memories of his childhood and stories of his relatives as the author constructs a detailed memoir of the hill folk of South Carolina. Although the book generally was well received after initial publication, it has been the focus of little critical comment. Indeed, the only major study of the book came in 1987 when Tony Stanley Cook extolled the book’s virtues in an article in Southern Studies entitled “Remembering the South Carolina Upcountry: Ben Robertson’s Red Hills and Cotton.” One reason critics may have ignored the book is its apparent simplicity as a glorification of the Southern way of life. However, such a reading is overly simplistic and ignores the underlying sophistication in Robertson’s text. Far from being merely a celebration of the Southern lifestyle, Red Hills and Cotton is an exploration of individual human mortality and the permanence of humanity in general.

My essay will examine Red Hills and Cotton as Robertson’s response to the escalating conflict of World War II. When he began the memoir in 1941, Robertson foresaw the entry of the United States into the war. A newspaper reporter in Britain, he had witnessed many of the atrocities of World War I—much of which he recorded in a book called I Saw England—and he knew that the United States was destined for a dark time of continuous conflict. Indeed, the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, which Robertson mentions in his final pages, dealt a significant blow to American morale. As Robertson composes his memoir of South Carolina, he dwells repeatedly on conflict, especially on the conflicts between North and South, urban and rural, and industrial and agricultural interests. As the text unfolds, Robertson evokes the permanence of humanity and attempts to convey to his readers the same conflicted sense of combined immortality and mortality that he had experienced as a war correspondent. Red Hills and Cotton is more than merely a memoir; it is a tribute to the endurance of the human spirit and a patriotic encouragement to Robertson’s contemporaries in a time of war.