A Man In Full

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual assault, racism, and torture. Additionally, the source material uses outdated, offensive terms for LGBTQIA people, Jewish people, and other minorities, which are replicated in this guide only in direct quotes of the source material.

“Charlie Croker was a man in full. He had a back like a Jersey bull. Didn’t like okra, didn’t like pears. He liked a gal that had no hairs.”

The novel takes its title from this ditty that people from Atlanta still sing about Charlie. The song has real-life roots in an old, little-known folk song from the American South. Charlie’s pride in the song is ironic since at this early stage in the novel, Charlie’s idea of a “man in full” is half-baked and rudimentary. It is only toward the end of the book that Charlie will understand what constitutes a man in full or a whole being.

“Atlanta had never been a true Old Southern city like Savannah or Charleston or Richmond, where wealth had originated with the land. Atlanta was an offspring of the railroad business […] created from scratch barely 150 years ago, and people had been making money there on the hustle ever since.”

The novel’s setting in Atlanta showcases the clash between the old, bygone world of the antebellum South and the new, brash materialistic world of gleaming towers and banks. Atlanta, a relatively new city, has allowed people like Charlie to build themselves up from scratch. However, Charlie hankers for the appearance of old money: the ownership of a plantation. Caught between the two worlds, Charlie hemorrhages money and lands himself in a dilemma.

“A quail shoot was a ritual in which the male of the species acted out his role of hunter, provider, and protector, and the female acted as if this was part of the natural, laudable, excellent, and compelling order of things.”

These lines illustrate Charlie’s antiquated, sexist, and conservative values. When he feels Elizabeth and Serena mock him during the quail hunt, he wishes to himself they would stay quiet. He believes that the natural order of the hunt is that the men act and the women admire.