The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2016

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Mexican Culture and Landscape

Content Warning: This section contains descriptions of child sexual abuse and neglect, domestic violence, graphically depicted deaths, and religious abuse and trauma.

Mexican culture is a key motif in the memoir, as Ruth and her family spent most of their childhood living in northern Mexico, and the valley where LeBaron is located sits firmly and clearly in Ruth’s memories as a place of deep significance. The culture and the LeBaron landscape remind Ruth of her experiences and thematically support both The Flaws and Dangers of Fundamentalism and The Joys, Pains, and Sacrifices of Familial Love. In Ruth’s early childhood, she looked forward to Mexican food, especially tortillas, as a special treat. She and her family were often around Mexican people because they frequently traveled between the US and Mexico as well as to the nearby towns around LeBaron.

The colony was built in northern Mexico so that its followers could avoid American laws against polygamy while continuing to receive US financial assistance in the form of welfare and food stamps. During one such excursion back from the US, Ruth had a pivotal experience: She saw a boy living in a box and realized that the poverty she experienced could get much worse. Ruth and her siblings learned Spanish, although Ruth struggled with it more than the others at first; Almost everyone in the colony spoke both Spanish and English. Lane’s first wife, Alejandra, was Mexican, and their children shared her Mexican heritage. Along with the language and people, the environment itself seemed to cast a spell over Ruth, and she often describes her surroundings in detail, setting the mood of each scene: “The yellow moon that night cast a dim light over the sandy, cactus-covered landscapes […], mesquite trees and tumbleweeds […]. Like the valley of LeBaron, it was a place of desolation but also of beauty” (131). A dreamlike quality pervades her descriptions, but they also convey a painful awareness that LeBaron harbored many dark secrets, mirroring the harsh and barren landscape.

Disability

Although Ruth was a healthy child, her childhood was defined by disability since many of her siblings were born with disabling conditions that worsened over time. When Ruth was still a young child, she watched as the mental health of her older sister Audrey gradually declined and then quickly and severely worsened when Lane began abusing her. Ruth and her mother were helpless to prevent Audrey’s decline, and she eventually stopped eating and lashed out more frequently. As a result, Audrey was hospitalized, and Ruth thought most about her mother, empathizing with her feelings of powerlessness. Ruth’s brother, Luke, likewise had developmental delays and seemed to stagnate as a teen. He frequently wandered off, leaving Ruth and the rest of the family in fear for his safety. Ruth’s younger sister, Meri, died as a baby due to a brain condition that prevented her from growing or being able to move.

Ruth’s grandmother insisted that Kathy’s lack of nutrition (given that for years she ate only beans) was likely the cause of her children’s difficulties. At one point, when Ruth experienced bullying at school, someone told her that her mother produced “retarded” children. She had never considered her siblings different before but suddenly worried about them and herself. Kathy’s response was always to be grateful; even when Meri died, she expressed this:

She told the crowd that God had sent Meri to our family as a gift to teach us unconditional love and generosity, even as we struggled to take care of the little girl who, in her few short years on earth, never learned to take care of herself (194).

Both Kathy and Ruth expressed sentiments related to their family members with disabilities and how they learned from them about the true meaning of familial love, which thematically aligns with the joys, pains, and sacrifices of familial love. When Ruth found out that Lane was abusing Luke, she could not bear the thought of her brother, who was particularly vulnerable due to his condition, going through what she went through, so she planned and carried out an escape, fleeing the colony with her siblings.

Sound

Even the memoir’s title, The Sound of Gravel, alludes to sound as a powerful motif. The motif and the title refers to the sound etched in Ruth’s memory of throwing a handful of gravel on her mother’s coffin: “Then I opened my hand and released the warm earth and rock, the sound of gravel, empty and hollow, echoing up from the hole as it struck my mother’s wooden coffin” (303). The text uses sound not only to invoke the audio and memory centers of readers but also to illuminate Ruth’s observations and perspective, thematically illuminating the joys, pains, and sacrifices of familial love. Sounds are a distinctive aspect of Ruth’s memories, and she frequently describes events through this lens. The sound of each of her siblings, such as Audrey’s moaning or Aaron’s baby noises, are largely what defines them, and the sound of gravel is the “sound of home” (27) that Ruth associates with the place she grew up. In addition, Ruth uses sound to indicate emotion or severity, such as when Ruth’s mother promises to keep her safe from Lane: “By then I was walking out the door of the house. I could still hear Mom, but her voice sounded distant and small, as thin as the promises that fell from her lips” (244). Here, her mother’s voice is faint, just like her promises to protect her children. The natural environment is an important element of Ruth’s past, and the sounds of wind and thunder frequently accent the scenes she recreates through her writing. In these ways, sound anchors Ruth’s recollections of her past.