SOURCE: Davison, Allan. “Physical Imagery in Robert Penn Warren's ‘Blackberry Winter.’” Georgia Review 22, no. 4 (winter 1968): 482-88.

In the following essay, Davison underlines the imagistic significance of the narrator's feet in “Blackberry Winter.”

The ability to use physical imagery and human actions as vehicles for psychological and philosophical observations on man is the commanding distinction of Robert Penn Warren's art. His most carefully constructed images dramatically realize a “dialectal configuration”¹ which embodies a struggle to explore fully the significance of human experience. This artistic struggle is found in Warren's best fiction in a way that generates a rare brand of sympathetic excitement in the classroom.

In none of his short stories is the quest for understanding better realized than the oft-anthologized, frequently taught “Blackberry Winter”; in no story has he better integrated his imagistic patterns. “Blackberry Winter” is one of Warren's best and, deservedly, most popular stories. Through this...