SOURCE: Cullick, Jonathan S. “Return, Reconciliation, Redemption: Uses of the Past in Warren's Biographical Narratives.” In Making History: The Biographical Narratives of Robert Penn Warren, pp. 9-27. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.

In the following excerpt, Cullick considers the theme of the Prodigal Son and the importance of the past in Warren's “Blackberry Winter.”

An example of redemption through knowledge and confession is “Blackberry Winter,” a Prodigal Son story in which the narrator at age forty-four, revisits one day of his childhood to acknowledge his complicity in time. Seth observes that in childhood, time is not a pattern of separate moments but an atmosphere within which events emerge: “When you are nine years old, what you remember seems forever; for you remember everything and everything is important and stands big and full and fills up Time and is so solid that you can walk around and around...