The passage, though based on a true event in American history, is also a metaphor for how people- specifically farmers- were feeling at the time. Humans can be greatly affected by their surroundings. ‘Survival of the fittest’ is Nature’s rule, but humans do not think it applies to them, instead, humans suffer but do not die out. Nature and human emotion is intertwined to the point that the passage feels weighed down and the situation grave, both mentally and physically. Because of the chapters in which the narrator commentates on the wider population, the reader knows the attitude of the people, their desperation and exhaustion. The characters, as we learn, are more positive than readers would expect them to be. Through the balance of specific
