Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
in the 1920s and the author's ambivalence toward the social and economic
changes taking place in the New South. The visit to the city exposed the
Bundren children to the wonders of mass consumer society: electric toy
trains,graphophones—andbananas.IftheboyVardamancouldonlyfan-
tasize about owning an electric train, he could on occasion savora taste of
thetropicsthatwasrapidlybecomingas''American''asappleorpeachpie.
Faulkner's symbolic use of bananas, then, was rooted less in his concern
about the erosion of elite culture than in his unease about mass consump-
tion as a remedy for the pain and displacements associated with profound
individual, familial, and societal transitions.
102
Poets, novelists, and musicians were not the only people experiment-
ing with the banana's symbolicvalue; the fruit companies themselves con-
structed images of bananas and the tropics through mass marketing cam-
paigns.Lavishlyillustratedbooklets,oftengearedtowardchildren,offered
a view of production and distribution processes that stressed the bene-
fits that the banana trade brought to both North American consumers
and Latin American producers.
103
In addition, writers with close ties to
the United Fruit Company published a numberof articles and topics dur-
ing the early twentieth century in which modernity arrived to ''jungle''
landscapesviaUnitedFruit'sGreatWhiteFleet.A1932articleinEconomic
Geography described nineteenth-century Caribbean landscapes as ''dark,
tangled forests of the swampy lowlands,'' inhabited by ''poison snakes,
ferocious animals, myriads of insects, and dreaded diseases.'' Then, the
author noted dramatically, a change took place:
On the eve of the birth of the present century there was launched in
Boston what has become one of the most significant enterprises the
world has known—the modern banana industry. Now staunch New
Englanders are putting their money into the proved business of banana
production and distribution. American engineers are invading the
jungles with steam shovels. Swamps are being drained and axes are
heard ringing in the woodland. Fruitful banana plantations are
appearing as if by magic.
104
The author, a son of United Fruit attorney Bradley Palmer, stressed the
transformative role played by U.S. investors and engineers, while largely
ignoring both the past efforts of smallholders and the contemporarycon-
tributions of laborers in performing feats of ''magic.'' Palmer was by no
meansunique;popularandscholarlywritersduringthistimeconsistently
stressedtheneedto''tame''tropicallandscapesandenlightentheirhuman
