The Great Santini | Literary Precedents

The Great Santini Literary Precedents

The Great Santini takes its place among the Southern fiction tradition in spotlighting the effects of the South upon its population. The violence teeming beneath a genteel Southern surface reflects the situation in novels such as Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). The white trash family of the Ewells in that novel parallels the Pettus family in Santini. Themes of racism, maturity, rituals and religion appear repeatedly in the fiction of Flannery O'Connor and in work by the more contemporary Anne Rivers Siddons. While Southern novels of the past may not have so graphically portrayed abuse on the part of the family patriarch, his unquestionable position of power has always been emphasized.