SOURCE: Tucker, Kenneth. “The Pied Piper—a Key to Understanding Robert Penn Warren's ‘Blackberry Winter.’” Studies in Short Fiction 19, no. 4 (fall 1982): 339-42.

In the following essay, Tucker assesses the parallels between Warren's “Blackberry Winter” and the medieval German folk tale of the Pied Piper.

Although “Blackberry Winter” is known as one of Robert Penn Warren's finest short stories, few critics have studied it. Those who have analyzed it have emphasized its themes—the unpredictability of nature, the loss of innocence, the mutability of joy, and the growing awareness of evil's reality.¹ None, however, has directed attention to a scheme which guides the reader's perceptions of the fictional events—the story's parallelism to the medieval German legend of the Pied Piper. Warren uses the parallelism to sharpen our understanding of young Seth's behavior on the day which alters his life, to clarify Seth's relationship with the tramp who wanders...