The Land by SparkNotes

Author:SparkNotes [SparkNotes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Land

Summary

After he leaves east Texas, Paul works for several years for the gray-haired woman, Hattie Crenshaw. She treats him well and encourages him to start his own furniture-making business or to get more schooling and become a teacher, lawyer, or doctor. Paul likes Hattie but remains aloof, and, when her daughters get married and their husbands take control of the farm, Paul and Mitchell leave. Next, the two men work in a turpentine camp, draining resin from trees until the trees are dead and useless shells. Paul dislikes this treatment of trees and even more strongly dislikes the men in the camp—many of the white bosses and workers are convicts or murderers, and the bosses are viciously racist. One incident in particular haunts both Paul and Mitchell. The white bosses had perfunctorily buried a black man killed in a brawl without any gesture toward justice or respect for the dead man, and they also hunted down and killed a black man who fought with a white man, leaving his body to rot in the camp for all the workers to see.

Next, Paul and Mitchell work in lumber camps for a boss named Jessup, who holds a bitter grudge against Paul because he looks white. One morning, Jessup is wickedly glad to find that Mitchell, who has gone courting, is absent. He uses Mitchell's absence as an excuse to punish Paul, and he tells Paul that he must do both his and Mitchell's work that day, or he will turn him in to the sheriff. Paul begins to work calmly, certain that Mitchell will arrive before long. He does, and although the two men work steadily through the day, Jessup is not satisfied and demands that Paul work the next day, Sunday, without pay, again threatening to turn him over to the sheriff. Paul struggles with his temper but ultimately concedes. Frustrated, the two men go down to Miz Mary's, the local saloon. Paul usually does not go to the saloon, preferring to write letters to his sister and read. Consequently, Paul is not popular among his fellow workers. That night at the bar, he sits in a corner writing when Maylene, one of Mitchell's girls, sits down with him, asking him questions about Mitchell. Before long, another man comes over and tries to snatch Maylene away from Paul's table. Soon enough Paul and Mitchell are engaged in a fight with the man and escape only when Miz Mary breaks up the ruckus.

That night, Paul sits up thinking and devises a plan: after he finishes work on Sunday, he and Mitchell will leave the camp for Vicksburg, where Hattie Crenshaw recommended he work with her acquaintance, a skilled carpenter. By leaving at nightfall, they will be gone before Jessup realizes that they are missing. Mitchell joins Paul on the slope the next day, and the men put in their last day at the camp. At noon, Maylene brings them lunch. The men eat gratefully, and finally Mitchell tells her of their plan.

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