Like our current times, the people of Old Ox cling to the social hierarchy that puts white men at the top and treats Blacks, gays, women, and other minorities cruelly and unjustly. Though initially, the townspeople show perfunctory politeness toward the Walkers, there is smoldering resentment.
They feel the Walkers have betrayed the existing social order. When the townspeople hear that two black men and two white men are working side by side, they are enraged. He joins his father, Landry, and Prentiss, in farming the land. Miraculously, George and Isabelle’s son Caleb is alive and returns home. They will need money for their upcoming journey. When George offers to pay the brothers a fair wage to help him farm his land, they accept. To be left alone for a time.” He also states that they want to find their mother, who had been sold.
When asked about their plans, Prentiss says, “It’s just nice. What that life will look like, they are not sure. The brothers have fled the cruel plantation adjacent to the Walker farm and begun walking toward a new life. One day, George encounters two former slaves named Landry and Prentiss.
The Civil War has ended, and they believe their son Caleb, who fought for the confederacy, is dead. He and his wife Isabelle live on a farm on the outskirts of a fictitious town called Old Ox. Born in the North, he never embraced the culture of the South. George Walker is the primary protagonist. A gifted writer, Nathan Harris was only 29 years old when this book was published! ‘The Sweetness of Water’ was on the 2021 Booker Prize Long List, President Obama’s 2021 Favorite Book List as well as Oprah’s Book Club selection for June 2021. The dialogue between the characters is filled with palpable tension and glimpses of hope. Without dismantling oppressive social structures, the freedom of former slaves was limited the seeds of Jim Crow were planted. In the fictitious town of Old Ox, the white community viciously resists slavery’s end. ‘The Sweetness of Water’ by Nathan Harris is an erudite depiction of a small Georgian town turned upside down after the Civil War.
0 kommentar(er)
