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Conor Finnerty-Esmonde

April 7, 2017

Introduction to dramatic literature

The Trip to Bountiful Paper

Every person has some sort of idea of what their perfect life would be. Some people

would make vast changes, and some would only change a few things, but as a whole, we as

humans always have dreams and things that we want to achieve. In the play The Trip to Bountiful

by Horton Foote, all of the main characters have some sort of ideal situation or dream, which we

can also call their “bountiful” (This will be explained later in the paper). The three main

characters have distinctly different wants when it comes to their “bountiful”, and in in this paper

we will discuss what each character’s bountiful means to them, how they go about achieving

their bountiful, how successful they are in achieving their bountiful, and if their image of bounty

changes during the course of the play.

The first character that we will discuss is Mother Watts, because the word “bountiful”

applies to her, the most. As you can tell by the title of the play, there is a trip that is attempted by

Mother Watts to a town called Bountiful. This is the town where Mother Watts grew up, and also

ended up raising her child until it became a ghost town, forcing her to move to a bigger city in

order to be able to support the family. But Mother Watts never forgot her true home, and has

always wanted to return and live there again. It becomes very clear in the show that this has been

a dream of hers for a very long time, and is what motivates her from day to day. She almost

seems to be driven by the hope that some day she will return to her true home. Mother Watts’

dream is literally the town of Bountiful, so that is why we will refer to everyones dream as their
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“bountiful” from now on. The way that Mother Watts achieves her bountiful is by trying to go to

Bountiful. She believes that living there will revitalize her, and make her happy again. However,

as her dream starts to become a reality, and she travels closer to Bountiful, it becomes more

apparent that she will not be able to stay there forever. The final nail in the coffin is the sherif

telling Mother Watts that her son will be taking her home, and she cannot enter Bountiful. Her

last hope is just to set foot in Bountiful, even if it is just for twenty minutes. This is a huge

change for Mother Watts. She realizes that she does not need to live there forever, but can simply

go back to see it one last time, and that will be enough to fulfill her dream and make her happy.

So in a way, Mother Watts is successful in achieving her bountiful. The end of the play would

hint that Mother Watts has found her bountiful and is content, at least for now. But not all of the

characters can say that.

The next character would be Ludie. Instead of a physical place, Ludie’s bountiful is

actually an idea. From the start of the play, you can tell that something is a little different about

this family compared to your average American family. It is later revealed that Ludie and Jessie

Mae are not able to have children, and Ludie was sick for a long time, and could not work. What

Ludie wants is the only thing he really cannot have. Ludie’s bountiful is the American dream.

Ludie wants success, with kids, and a perfect family, and lots of money all guarded by a white

picket fence. He is a bit torn as to how to achieve this though. He has tried having children, and

tried to be successful in his work, but he keeps getting held back by things. Ludie almost seems

to have given up hope on his bountiful. He does not want to go out anymore, and wants to just sit

around and mope. He is broken, and his dreams are basically shattered. Nothing about his dream

really changes in the play. At the end, it seems that he still wants the same things. However, I

think that he realizes that they aren’t quite as important as he once thought they were, and has
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learned to be happy with the small victories, like the love of his wife and mother. But Ludie

certainly isn’t the only one with these kinds of hopes and dreams.

Jessie Mae’s bountiful is similar to Ludie’s, but in my opinion a lot more greedy. She

wants success, money, and high status, but is unwilling to work for it, and just complains about

what she doesn’t have. When she is out with her friends, you can see her always trying to be the

same, and match her friends in fashion, status, objects, and all the rest. The moment when she

looks at a price tag on a dress, and gives a look of exasperation and sadness because she knows

she cannot afford it tells it all. However, unlike Ludie, it does not seem as though she is doing

much to try and change things besides complain. Perhaps this is because in the time period, she

could not work, but this is post WWII, some women had entered the workforce, and if she really

wanted the extra cash, she could have helped to work for it too. The other bountiful that Jessie

Mae goes for that is a bit more subtle is normality. She is sick of living under the shadow of

Mother Watts, and she just wants to live a normal life with her husband free of worrying about

whether her stepmother will flea the city. Ultimately, her view of bountiful does not change at

all. Out of the three characters, hers changes the least. Her character is stubborn, and it is hard to

have much sympathy for her. The only thing that seems to change is that she softens a bit to

Mother Watts at the end, but that might be more of an acting choice than anything. Jessie Mae is

unsuccessful with her bountiful as the play ends. She does not live a lavish lifestyle yet, and

overall she does not seem to appreciate Mother Watts or Ludie much more. In the end, her trip to

bountiful is the least progressive of all the main characters.

We are all dreamers, big and small, and The Trip to Bountiful truly captures some

interesting, beautiful, and heartbreaking dreams. Hopefully through this paper, you were able to

understand what each character’s bountiful was, how they went about achieving their bountiful,
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how successful they were in achieving their bountiful, and if their image of bounty changed

during the course of the play. Even though it is sad to see some dreams be lost, we also saw some

fulfilled. It is a melancholy tale, but a beautiful one at that, and hopefully one that will last for

generations to come.