"I prize the Depression, for instance, because I learned the value of things in the Depression that a way people who don't have to worry about such things never learned to prize it really, I believe"
About this Quote
Foote’s provocation is the kind that lands like a slap and then asks you to admit it stung for a reason: to “prize” the Depression sounds perverse until you hear the real target - comfort as a kind of cultural amnesia. He’s not romanticizing breadlines so much as elevating scarcity into an education, a moral curriculum that money can’t easily buy. The repetition and self-correction (“for instance,” “really, I believe”) matter here; the sentence gropes toward something he knows is socially unacceptable to say cleanly. That hesitancy is part of the pitch: this isn’t a slogan, it’s a confession.
The specific intent is to claim authority. Foote, a Southern writer shaped by early-20th-century upheaval, frames hardship as a credential: he “learned the value of things” in a way the insulated never had to. Subtext: there’s a hierarchy of perception, and the poor (or once-poor) see more clearly. It’s a subtle rebuke to postwar American abundance, where convenience can flatten judgment and turn “value” into price.
Contextually, Foote’s generation lived through the Depression, the war, and the national mythmaking that followed. His line pushes back against the triumphalist story that prosperity equals progress. What makes it work is its uncomfortable trade: suffering becomes meaning. The reader is forced to argue not with history but with the possibility that ease can make you shallow - and that memory of want can function as a kind of moral ballast.
The specific intent is to claim authority. Foote, a Southern writer shaped by early-20th-century upheaval, frames hardship as a credential: he “learned the value of things” in a way the insulated never had to. Subtext: there’s a hierarchy of perception, and the poor (or once-poor) see more clearly. It’s a subtle rebuke to postwar American abundance, where convenience can flatten judgment and turn “value” into price.
Contextually, Foote’s generation lived through the Depression, the war, and the national mythmaking that followed. His line pushes back against the triumphalist story that prosperity equals progress. What makes it work is its uncomfortable trade: suffering becomes meaning. The reader is forced to argue not with history but with the possibility that ease can make you shallow - and that memory of want can function as a kind of moral ballast.
Quote Details
| Topic | Tough Times |
|---|
More Quotes by Shelby
Add to List
