Blues Ain't No Mockingbird

An anecdote is a brief story, real or fictional, told to illustrate an idea. At least three times throughout the story, a character tells or says they will tell a story—and those stories have a “point,” whether explicit or implicit. Granny doesn’t explicitly tell the children why she doesn’t want the men on her property; instead, she tells the story of the man on the bridge. From this, it can be inferred that Granny has seen for herself how the camera steals humanity and that she wants the children to understand that as well. Cathy is then moved to tell her own story, “[a]bout this lady Goldilocks who barged into a house that wasn’t even hers” (132). She, too, understands that the men are trespassing, but she sees it the way a child would: The men are barging in, without a care for what belongs to whom.

Anecdotes, as a literary device, highlight a motif of storytelling. At the end of the story, Cathy says she will one day write a story “about the proper use for the hammer” (136), indicating that, like Granny, she’s witnessed something that has made an impression, and one day she’ll be able to tell that story in order to illustrate its meaning.

That the story is told from a child’s point of view allows for a more comprehensive view of what is unfolding. The child doesn’t yet have Granny’s cynicism or Granddaddy’s resigned silence; she doesn’t even have Cathy’s know-it-all bossiness. The child can say what is happening with very little of her own preconceived notions. When she does mention her past experiences, they reveal the layers within the action, as when she reveals that Cathy told her why they’ve had to move so often: because Granny has gone after people for being patronizing, presumptuous, or intrusive. Through this ingenuous narrator can be seen grandparents ravaged by oppression, as well as the hard-won peace that the child, blessedly, takes for granted.