58 pages • 1 hour read
Fannie FlaggFried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Section 4 (Pages 295-395)Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Summary: Pages 295-325
By the late 1940s, all of George and Onzell’s children are adults. Naughty Bird gives birth to a daughter at 17, and her boyfriend, Le Roy Grooms, leaves her for a lighter-skinned woman. By 1949, Naughty Bird is deeply depressed, having tried everything to lighten her skin, straighten her hair, and win Le Roy back. It’s only after Le Roy dies that she recovers and returns to work at the local beauty parlor.
Other flashbacks and newspaper articles center on Jasper, who marries a light-skinned, middle-class woman while working various jobs on trains. By 1955, trains are on the decline and the railroad yard near Whistle Stop is closing. By 1958, Jasper feels he no longer fits into society. He’s proud of his hard work and the opportunities he created for his children, but he recognizes that younger generations of black Americans have moved beyond his understanding of racism as something that simply has to be “endured.”
The closure of the railways also affects Smokey Lonesome, who finds himself sitting outside an abandoned terminal in 1965, fantasizing about the time “[w]hen Idgie and Ruth and Stump still lived in the back of the cafe, and all the trains were still running” (321). Finally, a flashback to 1949 focuses on a chance encounter between Jasper’s daughter Clarissa and her Uncle Artis. Light-skinned Clarissa is presumed as white while shopping for perfume, and she says nothing when the manager throws Artis out of the store for “pawing” at her (297).
Back in the present, Evelyn follows Mrs. Threadgoode’s suggestion that she “take her troubles to the Lord,” impulsively deciding to visit one of Birmingham’s black churches (307). The churchgoers—including, unbeknownst to Evelyn, Clarissa and her husband—welcome Evelyn warmly, and Evelyn is deeply moved by the service and the congregation: “She knew she would never come back. This was their place. But for the first time in her life, she had felt joy” (313). However, her next visit to Mrs. Threadgoode dampens her good mood; Evelyn notices how old her friend looks and that she “seem[s] to be getting more and more mixed up about time, past and present” (323). For her part, Mrs. Threadgoode says that she “[s]ometimes […] just cain’t wait to get to heaven” to be with Cleo and Albert (325).
Summary: Pages 326-360
In September, Evelyn asks Mrs. Threadgoode about a time she mentioned that Idgie was a murder suspect. Mrs. Threadgoode explains that in 1955, the authorities discovered Frank Bennett’s truck in the river near Eva Bates’s bar, and Grady had to take Idgie and Big George to Georgia for trial.
In a flashback, Idgie takes the stand to respond to allegations that she threatened Frank. Idgie, apparently unconcerned, admits to the interaction and that she helped Ruth leave Frank. She then says she was with her mother and Ruth on the night in question. It’s only the arrival of a surprise witness, Reverend Herbert Scroggins, that ultimately saves her. Idgie and the Pickle Club have harassed the reverend for years, and Idgie is surprised when he claims that she is a devout churchgoer and was volunteering at a revival at the time of the murder. Smokey’s hobo friends, posing as parishioners, confirm the reverend’s story. The judge dismisses the case, and to this day, Mrs. Threadgoode isn’t sure who killed Frank.
Railroad Bill’s identity also remains a mystery, which Idgie teases Grady about in a flashback to 1939. However, during a 1986 Thanksgiving dinner at Stump and Peggy Threadgoode’s, Stump tells his granddaughter and her boyfriend that he once saw Idgie washing coal dust off her hands and face while Railroad Bill’s “black stocking hat” lay discarded on the floor beside her (332).
A 1956 excerpt from the Weems Weekly describes the cafe, beauty shop, and post office closing in quick succession. A 1969 flashback reveals that after failing to hold down a job, Smokey Lonesome ends up at a rescue mission in Birmingham, which is now on the verge of closing. Knowing he will need to leave soon, and still “faithful” in his love for Ruth, he begins walking toward Whistle Stop. A newspaper article written a few days later implies he froze to death while sleeping alongside the railroad.
In October of 1986, Evelyn prepares a meal of Southern classics and takes it to Mrs. Threadgoode. She announces that she’s going on a trip but will have a surprise for Ninny when she returns. Two days later, Evelyn boards a plane for a “fat farm” in California, having been inspired by Mrs. Threadgoode and her experience at the church. She has also begun hormone therapy and has become a Mary Kay distributor.
Summary: Pages 361-395
A 1930 flashback reveals the true circumstances of Frank’s disappearance. Sipsey is babysitting Stump at the cafe when Frank tries to take the baby at gunpoint. When his back is turned, Sipsey hits him over the head with a skillet, killing him. She sends Artis to fetch Big George. By the time they return, Sipsey has covered Frank with a sheet. George takes the body to the shed, and Artis guards it while George disposes of Frank’s truck. The next morning, Artis buries the bloody clothing and sheet, and George boils Frank’s remains in the pot he uses to cook pigs. George doesn’t boil Frank’s head, as Sipsey has buried it out of superstition. The Weems Weekly reports that the skull resurfaced in 1967, but the authorities are never able to identify the remains. The paper shuts down two years later when Dot and her husband retire to southern Alabama.
Artis had taken the opportunity to stab Frank’s body with his pocketknife. He cherishes this memory for the rest of his life and is thinking about it in the moments before his death in 1979. On his deathbed, Artis is considered “addlebrained,” but the memory of the “secret” he shared with his father soothes the “agitated” state he works himself into while reflecting on his tumultuous life.
By December 1986, Evelyn has lost weight and made several friends at the lodge. She receives a letter from Mrs. Threadgoode’s neighbor informing her that Ninny has died. Evelyn returns to Alabama but can’t bear to visit Whistle Stop until April. Mrs. Threadgoode’s neighbor, Mrs. Hartman, gives Evelyn a box full of photos and other mementoes of Whistle Stop. A note from Mrs. Threadgoode explains that she’s leaving Evelyn several of Sipsey’s recipes. Mrs. Hartman shows Evelyn where the cafe, beauty shop, and other businesses used to be, and the two women stop at a store in Troutville for a strawberry soda. Before leaving, Evelyn drives past the Threadgoode’s old house and cries. She is “wondering why people had to get old and die” (384).
Two years later, Evelyn visits Ninny and the rest of the Threadgoodes at the cemetery. She is driving a Mary Kay Cadillac, and she tells Mrs. Threadgoode that she’d hoped to take her for a ride in it. Nevertheless, she feels at peace with Mrs. Threadgoode’s death: “[I]f there really was a heaven, Mrs. Threadgoode was certainly there” (388). While leaving the cemetery, Evelyn passes Ruth’s grave, and sees that someone called “Bee Charmer” has left flowers and a note.
The novel’s final scene takes place in Florida in 1988, when a family of three stops at a roadside stand run by an elderly woman and her brother, Julian. The woman gives the daughter a honeycomb for free, telling her she’s her “millionth customer this month,” and then watches as the car drives away (395).
Section 4 Analysis
The final section of Fried Green Tomatoes brings to the foreground the novel’s theme of aging and death. Evelyn has struggled with these issues from the novel’s opening pages, in part because of the way in which they intersect with sexism. As a middle-aged woman with grown children, Evelyn has absorbed the societal message that she has nothing more to contribute to the world. Evelyn also suffers from a fear of illness and death so paralyzing that it ironically prevents her from living in any meaningful way: “She began living with one foot in the grave. When she looked at her palm, she even imagined that her life line was getting shorter” (62).
By the end of the novel, Evelyn’s attitude toward aging and death has changed, thanks in large part to her friendship with Mrs. Threadgoode. Although Evelyn allows herself a moment in Whistle Stop to grieve both for Mrs. Threadgoode and for the inevitability of death, she is able to come to terms with the loss and move forward. In particular, the ease with which Mrs. Threadgoode talks about her eventual passing transforms death from something alien into something familiar for Evelyn. When she stands near Ninny’s grave, Evelyn feels “as if Mrs. Threadgoode was just standing behind a door” (388).
Flagg further suggests that the transmission of memories from one person to another in some ways circumvents death, with Mrs. Threadgoode, Ruth, and Whistle Stop now surviving in Evelyn. The final pages of the novel underscore this life-affirming message, as Flagg reveals that Idgie is still alive. Flagg casts Idgie in an almost supernatural light, omitting her name and suggesting that she left a message on Ruth’s grave without Evelyn noticing. It’s as though Idgie is a mythical figure who exists outside the normal passage of time, continuing to spread good humor as the people and places around her change.
Issues related to race and racism also become particularly important in this last section of the novel, especially in the events surrounding Frank’s death. Mrs. Threadgoode says her husband once speculated that Idgie must have been shielding someone else during her trial, and the flashback to the trial itself reveals that her reasons for doing so were based her knowledge of how racism operates:
[Big George] had begged her not to stand trial, but she was determined to give him an alibi for that night. She knew she was his only chance. The odds of a white woman’s getting off were much higher than his; especially if his alibi depended on the words of another Negro (341).
It eventually emerges that it was Sipsey rather than George who killed Frank, though George did help to cover up his mother’s actions. He did so only because he knew that the law wouldn’t be lenient even if Sipsey committed the act to protect Ruth’s child: “There was no defense for a black who killed a white man in Alabama, so it never occurred to him to do anything but what he had to do” (365).
Race and racism are also prominent in the chapters involving George’s children and grandchildren. Naughty Bird’s failed relationship with Le Roy is the most explicit example of colorism in the novel, and it speaks to the pressure black women face to conform to Western beauty standards. Conversely, Clarissa is able to achieve these standards with little effort, and the scene between Clarissa and Artis illustrates the complex moral questions raised by “passing” as white. On the one hand, passing is a privilege that not all black people enjoy, and it can come at the expense of racial solidarity, as Clarissa’s silence in the face of the store’s actions demonstrates. On the other hand, Clarissa’s reasons for passing in the first place are sympathetic, and stem from the alienation she feels within the black community: “[S]he was tired of the stares of the other blacks when she rode the freight elevator before” (296). The scene speaks to some of the complexities of what it means to be black in 20th-century America. The sisters find themselves on two sides of the same coin; Clarissa feels that her peers think she’s not black enough, while Naughty Bird strives to become “whiter” to win back Le Roy. Colorism isolates both women.
The diverging paths taken by Jasper and Artis do the same. Broadly speaking, Jasper attempts to assimilate into American culture at large, even choosing to live in a white neighborhood: “He had been one of the first blacks in Birmingham to move into white Enon Ridge, later known as Dynamite Hill. After the Klan had blown up Jasper’s and several of his neighbors’ red brick homes, some had left, but he had stayed” (319). As this passage illustrates, assimilating means tolerating a certain amount of racism in a way that Jasper’s grandson comes to see as incompatible with racial pride: “[H]e was embarrassed by the way [Jasper] bowed and scraped to white people” (320). By contrast, Artis fully embraces Slagtown and a form of black identity that resists assimilation. This is mirrored in what he says of his many romances, “I never hankered after no white woman! High yellow was as high as I cared to go” (372).
