Sounder

Sounder is a 1969 young adult novel, written by William H. Armstrong, about a young African American boy, his family, and their hunting dog named Sounder. Written in a simple, direct narrative style that is reflected in James Barkley's illustrations, Armstrong's novel won the Newberry Award in 1970 and was adapted into a film in 1972. Sounder is a valuable part of the children's literature canon, not only because of its representation of sharecropping in the American south but also because it raises provocative questions about multicultural literature and authorship.

Armstrong's novel tells the story of an African American boy whose parents work as sharecroppers and whose father is arrested for stealing a ham and some pork sausages. At the same time, the novel also tells the story of Sounder, the family's coon dog, who got shot by one of the deputies arresting the father. After his father's arrest, the boy spends much of his time trying to find the injured Sounder, but to no avail. Sounder finally returns home, horribly disfigured, several months after the father's arrest, on the morning after the boy visits his father in jail. Although Sounder has returned, the boy still feels restless and spends much time each year after the harvest trying to find his father on one of the chain gangs around the state. During his travels, the boy meets a teacher who offers him a job and a place to live during the winter, a position that enables him to learn how to read.

After several years, the father returns home, having been severely injured in a mining accident. He and Sounder go out on one last hunting trip, during which the father dies peacefully in his sleep. Sounder dies shortly thereafter, also peacefully, and the boy is able to make sense of both Sounder and his father's deaths because of what he has read with his teacher.

Throughout the novel, there is a strong connection made between Sounder and the boy's father. Although the whole family loves Sounder, the dog belongs to the father; their close connection is made clear from the beginning of the novel. In the first pages of the story, the boy asks his father where he got Sounder, and the father replies, “I never got him. He came to me along the road when he wasn't more'n a pup.” The boy frequently tries to connect with his father by talking about Sounder, and his desperate search for Sounder after his father's arrest can be read as a way of trying to help his father in the only way he can.

Sounder is written in a very straightforward style, with an emphasis on vivid sensory details, such as the crisp feel of the boy's pillowcase, the sound of the mother singing in the cabin, and the smell of ham cooking. The most notable element of Armstrong's narrative, however, is the overall lack of names, dates, and places. The only character throughout the entire novel to have a name is Sounder, and although the boy lists several county names as he searches for his father, the reader never learns for certain where the family's farm is located. Although the appearance of sharecropping and chain gangs places the story in the first [Page 1978]half of the 20th century, the lack of names, dates, and places gives the story a timeless, mythical feeling as well.

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