Prophets of the Great Smokey Mountains

German Smith

Professor Marc McGrath

LITR221 I015

March 30, 2014

The Prophet of the Great Smokey Mountains: Character Analysis of Sheriff Green

Mary Murfree wrote The Prophet of the Great Smokey Mountains in 1885 under the pseudonym Charles Egbert Craddock. This fictional book explores mountaineer culture in Appalachia during an era when rural Tennessee was becoming encroached upon by Union forces trying to establish formal governments in the Mountain District (Whelen 9). In this isolated place “the feeling of oppression was spontaneous and it involved a high degree of emotionalism” as mountaineers attempted to protect their indigenous way of life from change (as quoted in Whelen 17). Events during this historical era caused rural communities to fear oppression from Northerners as they heard tales of the Yankees’ technological wonders like electrocution replacing hanging as capital punishment in New York and the first skyscraper being erected in Chicago in 1884 (Washington State University). Murfree’s novel can be tedious and difficult for modern readers to decipher because she writes in the broken regional dialect of the mountaineers. She also uses lengthy descriptions of nature that overtake the story line and lose the interest of readers if they do not take the time to delve deeply into the symbolic meanings to apply them to characters’ actions. Using the story of Rick Taylor who was falsely accused of murder, Murfree’s novel describes how subversive tactics were used by the mountain people to provide escape from unjust authorities whom they considered to be neighborhood outsiders. Sheriff Micajah Green becomes the catalyst for guerrilla tactics among the Cayce clan when he insults 17-year-old Dorinda Cayce in her own home after having the audacity to eat a meal with the hospitable Cayce women. Analysis of Sheriff Green reveals him to be a lonely man of formalized justice who is spiritually bankrupt and symbolizes human destruction of nature.

Sheriff...