A Mother In Mannville

“The orphanage is high in the Carolina mountains. Sometimes in the winter, the snowdrifts are so deep that the institution is cut off from the village below, from all the world.”

The story begins with this description of the isolation of the orphanage. This suggests the loneliness that Jerry is implied to feel without a family and begins to establish The Different Kinds of Isolation: Where the narrator desires and seeks solitude, Jerry suffers from it.

“Fog hides the mountain peaks, the snow swirls down the valleys, and a wind blows so bitterly that the orphanage boys who take the milk twice daily to the baby cottage reach the door with fingers stiff in an agony of numbness.”

Rawlings uses vivid imagery with sensory details such as the snow swirling down the valleys and fog hiding the mountains. This description gives a sense of being cut off from the wider world and entrapped by circumstances. Rawlings also reveals the children’s impoverished condition with the image of their stiff and numb fingers, suggesting they don’t have adequate protection from the elements. This description directly contrasts with the reality of the narrator, who has a warm, cozy cabin and more than enough resources to meet her needs.

“As I spoke, a light came over him, as though the setting sun had touched him with the same suffused glory with which it touched the mountains. I gave him a quarter.”

The image of the sun illuminating Jerry with “suffused glory” gives him an ethereal quality. The experience of seeing Jerry in a (literally) new light has an effect on the narrator—she previously gave him only a dime but now more than doubles the payment—even if the practical detail of the quarter somewhat punctures the lyrical