ترجمة قصص قصيرة مختارة للروائي "أرسكين كولدويل" :

الملخص EN

This paper is a translation of selected short stories by Erskine Caldwell, a novelist and a writer of short stories, who is ranked the fourth novelist in William Faulkner's list of the American writers, despite the fact that he is not liked by the Southerns because of his depiction of their life.

In his novels, Caldwell is concerned mainly with the poor, the whites and the blacks.

He was influenced by his father who was a social reformer.

Caldwell asks for racial equality and political intervention to put an end to the poverty of the Southerns; that is why he was neglected by the critical circles. 
This paper contains a critical introduction about the selected short stories, Candy- Man Beechum, Saturday Afternoon, Man and Woman and Molly Cotton tail.

Candy-Man Beechum depicts how the black suffered a lot and to what extent they were humiliated and looked down upon.

The main character is the candy man who has an appointment with the girl he loves.

He has to walk hastily for a very long way (ten miles) and should finish his journey before sunset.

In his way, he passes by a town of white majority, wishing to have dinner like any human.

He stops in front of a fish restaurant and decides to go in.

At the same time, he is arrested by a white policeman who chases him to put in jail and shoots him in leg.

He falls down and asks anyone to give him something to cover his skin and bones but he is neglected although he is surrounded by a lot of people.

The same idea is there in Saturday Afternoon, in which Will Maxie, a smart negro, is killed by a group of the white folk in a very merciless way.

Nobody likes Will although he is peaceable and sociable, planting his cotton cleverly by cutting down the grass first.

It seems that they falsely accuse him of talking to a daughter of one the whites.

Man and Woman, on the other hand, reflects the suffering of the poor whites who live day by day.

When Ring becomes ill, he decides to send his only daughter to his wife's sister to take care of.

Then, the child dies; Ring and his wife are compelled to go a very long way, on foot, to see the grave of their daughter; they are both tired and sad.

Molly Cotton Tail articulates an example of the sensitive whites who like to live in peace without chasing or killing anybody or anything, even if it is a rabbit.