Perspectives

“Saturday Afternoon” by Erskine Caldwell is a Modernist realistic piece of fiction dealing with themes like gratuitous violence against African-Americans and racism. A way to better understand these aspects about the short story is to put the text into perspective, correlating it with literary period and similar works.

Literary period

The short story falls within realistic Modernist fiction.

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Works with the same theme

A very similar work, both in terms of themes and historical context, is the short story “The Death of Tommy Grimes” (1962) by R.J. Meaddough, III.

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