2016م - 1444هـ
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe



Introduction

The news clipping featured in The Weems Weekly on the first page of

Fannie Flagg’s novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (1987) clearly

evokes a sense of warmth permeating through the crowded Whistle Stop Cafe serving

prized southern foods fried green tomatoes and barbecue set in the 1920s in Whistle

Stop, Alabama. The novel sets out to chart the lives of protagonist Idgie Threadgoode

and her intimate friend Ruth Jamison who together run the joint restaurant business

until Ruth’s immature death. Largely thanks to the famous cuisine and deep affection

the Whistle Stop residents feel toward the cafe, the place comes to represent the

close-knit community united by their mutual emotional attachment, prompting Flagg

to roundly and richly depict other characters in the focus text mostly through the

voice of Ninny Threadgoode, Idgie’s sister-in-law who resides in the nursing home in

1985. Infused with the power of friendship, love and loss, lively and vivid accounts of

Whistle Stop magically heal the depressed middle-aged Evelyn Couch who befriends

Ninny on her weekly visits to the nursing home; they permit rediscovery of selfassertion and sense of value that meaningfully serve to sustain lives.