SOURCE: Millichap, Joseph R. In Robert Penn Warren: A Study of the Short Fiction, pp. 17-25. New York: Twayne, 1992.

In the following excerpt, Millichap asserts that the tramp in “Blackberry Winter” symbolizes loss of innocence and the inevitability of change.

Perhaps no single, postwar American story has been so often anthologized, so frequently alluded to, or so highly praised as “Blackberry Winter.”¹ Warren himself acknowledged its special importance by including it in the second edition of Understanding Fiction (1959) along with his introductory essay, “‘Blackberry Winter’: A Recollection.” The last story he wrote, in the fall and winter of 1945-46, it is not only his best known but his best effort in the genre. Obviously “Blackberry Winter” stands successfully on its own; indeed, it was first published as a separate chapbook by the Cummington Press in 1946. But it is best read and most fully understood within the full context...