The Young Man from Atlanta by Horton Foote

First produced: 1995, at the Kampo Cultural Center, New York City

First published: 1995

Type of plot: Domestic realism

Time of work: Spring, 1950

Locale: Houston, Texas

Principal Characters:

• Will Kidder, a businessman
• Lily Dale Kidder, his wife, a homemaker
• Pete Davenport, Lily Dale’s stepfather
• Randy Carter, a former roommate of Will’s son and the play’s title character
• Carson, Pete’s great-nephew
• Ted Cleveland, Jr., head of Will’s company
• Tom Jackson, Will’s young colleague and friend
• Clara, the Kidders’ African American maid
• Etta Doris, formerly the Kidders’ maid

The Play

The Young Man from Atlanta is set in Houston, Texas, in the spring of 1950. The first of its six scenes takes place in the office of the wholesale grocery company where Will Kidder, who is sixty-four, has worked since he was in his early twenties. The setting of the remaining five scenes is the den of Will’s expensive new home.

The play begins with Will at his desk, taking a final look at his house plans. As Will explains to his fellow worker Tom Jackson, his house is tangible proof of his deepest conviction: that whatever his background, a man with a gift for competition will always succeed. Will seems untroubled by the fact that building the house has wiped out his savings or by his recent discovery that he has developed heart trouble. He has even come to terms with the death of his son Bill, which Will is certain was not an accident but suicide. The title character of the play is Bill’s former roommate, Randy Carter. Will confides to Tom that he suspects Randy’s motives and has forbidden his wife, Lily Dale, to have any further communication with him. Clearly Will believes in himself, in his future, and in his ability to deal with whatever life brings him. Before the scene ends, however, his confidence is shattered. Will is fired by Ted Cleveland, Jr., the son of the man with whom Will built the business. Cleveland tells Will that he is no longer effective. For the good of the business, he must be replaced by a younger man, Will’s protégé Tom Jackson.

In the scene that follows, Will experiences one disappointment after another. At first he is sure that he can start his own business. However, the bankers he thought were his friends are less than cordial. Although Lily Dale’s stepfather Pete Davenport will help, Will needs far more than Pete has available. When Will asks Lily Dale for a loan from her savings account, into which she had deposited the money he gave her each Christmas, she has to admit that she has given almost all of her funds to Randy, primarily because he kept assuring her that her son, Bill, was a good, religious man. Lily Dale’s revelation causes Will to fly into a fury and precipitates a heart attack.

In the third scene, which takes place one week later, Will is recovering. However, his relationship with Lily Dale is so strained that they cannot even discuss what looks like a very grim future. Nevertheless, Will still has enough pride to tear up a check from Ted. Meanwhile, another young man from Atlanta has appeared, Pete’s great-nephew Carson. He soon has Pete charmed into paying for his mother’s operation and his own college education, as well as for an excursion to Atlanta, where, it appears, Carson had known both Bill and Randy.

The play ends with Will and Lily Dale reconciled. Though Will is still not well, he plans to take advantage of Ted’s offer of a lower-level job, while, despite her age, Lily Dale may start teaching music again. Will’s discovery that his son gave his roommate every cent he had has intensified his suspicions about their relationship, but Lily Dale still chooses to believe in the young man from Atlanta and in the version of her son that he provides for her.

Dramatic Devices

The Young Man from Atlanta has simple, realistic sets. The first scene takes place in the office where Will works; it is functional but not luxurious. The other scenes take place in the den of the Kidders’ new home, a room that is described as well furnished but rather impersonal. Most of the time, the dialogue is just as sparse as the sets, and even when Will is boasting or Lily is reminiscing, one has a feeling that the actual words are inconsequential, like a musical accompaniment to the real action. Like the language, the movements of the actors exhibit a high degree of restraint. They walk in, talk, and walk out. There are no grand gestures. This simplicity is consistent with Foote’s intention: to present what seems like a slice of life, leaving the audience to find the underlying themes by paying attention to the hints the playwright has provided.

One of the most unusual devices employed by Foote is his use of an invisible but extremely important title character. The “young man from Atlanta” is in Houston throughout the play, attempting to reach Will or Lily Dale by phone or appearing at their home, only to be turned away by the maid. In the final scene, Lily Dale confesses to her husband that despite his objections, she has seen Randy once more; despite her pleas, Will refuses to see him. Though he never appears onstage, Randy is as important to the play as if he were actually present. He is the most menacing figure in the play, though it is not clear what he has done or exactly who he is. In Will’s eyes, he remains a menace, and even more so because Lily Dale continues to see him as the medium through whom she can maintain contact with her deceased son. Like Will, the audience has to live with the mystery of what may or may not have happened in the past and with the certainty that the “young man from Atlanta” will continue to be a sinister presence in the Kidders’ future life.

Critical Context

Over his half-century career, Horton Foote has written some fifty plays, along with numerous successful scripts for radio, television, and film. Two of his screenplays brought him Academy Awards: his adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and his original screenplay Tender Mercies (1983). In 1995, Foote won a Pulitzer Prize for his play The Young Man from Atlanta. However, though Foote is ranked among the finest American dramatists, his plays are not as well known as his films. Generally his plays have been produced at small theaters well away from Broadway; sometimes they have not even made it to New York. The Young Man from Atlanta was produced by an Off-Off-Broadway company and, according to a New York Times editorial writer, it was seen by only seventeen hundred people over its four-week run.

Negative reviews of The Young Man from Atlanta suggest why Foote’s dramas are less popular than they deserve to be. The play was called uninspired, insubstantial, and undramatic. However, other reviewers noted that, although Foote’s middle-class southerners are too well mannered to make scenes or to voice their frustrations in profanity, their sufferings are just as intense as those of the undisciplined characters so often seen in contemporary theater. As his admirers point out, Foote is a realist. The substance of his plays is life as it is lived by millions of Americans. His characters work hard, lose their jobs, worry about money, quarrel with their spouses and forgive them, love and lose their children, face illness and death, and, sometimes with the aid of religion and sometimes with only the vague hope of something better, still find the strength to go on.

In its style, its subject matter, and its themes, The Young Man from Atlanta resembles Foote’s other plays. It is true that the setting is Houston, rather than the small fictional town called Harrison or Richmond, which is based on Foote’s native Wharton, Texas. Harrison/Richmond was the setting of most of Foote’s earlier works, including the nine-cycle play The Orphans’ Home (pr. 1977-1997, pb. 1987-1989), in which Will, Lily Dale, and Pete all appeared. Clearly when they moved to Houston, these characters all brought with them their small-town customs and their old-fashioned values. For fifty years, Foote’s plays have revealed his abiding belief that one can find stability in a changing world only in such old-fashioned principles as honor, loyalty, courage, family, and faith.

Sources for Further Study

Briley, Rebecca Luttrell. You Can Go Home Again: The Focus on Family in the Works of Horton Foote. New York: Peter Lang, 1993.

Gallagher, Michael. “Horton Foote: Defying Heraclitus in Texas.” Southern Literary Journal 32 (Fall, 1999): 77-80.

Wall, James M. “The World of Horton Foote: Home, Family, Religion.” Christian Century 114 (February 19, 1997): 179-180.

Wood, Gerald C. Horton Foote and the Theater of Intimacy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999.

Wood, Gerald C. “Old Beginnings and Roads to Home: Horton Foote and Mythic Realism.” Christianity and Literature 45 (Spring/Summer, 1996): 359-372.

Wood, Gerald C. “The Physical Hunger for the Spiritual: Southern Religious Experience in the Plays of Horton Foote.” In The World Is Our Home: Society and Culture in Contemporary Southern Writing, edited by Jeffrey J. Folks and Nancy Summer Folks. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000.

Wood, Gerald C, ed. Horton Foote: A Casebook. New York: Garland, 1998.