Themes
God's Little Acre was published by Viking Press in 1933. Author Erskine Caldwell was influenced in part by textile mill strikes in Gastonia, North Carolina, and he considered this work to be a "proletarian" novel dealing with the plight of workers deprived of union protection. Will Thompson represents both the power of the working class and how it is frustrated by the law. When Thompson is killed by guards as he attempts to reopen the mill, his death becomes a rallying cry. But the workers remain disempowered, as the mills remain closed.
The book also examines the misuse of the land and other natural resources. Ty Ty Walden spends his time digging for gold instead of farming the rich soil. He suffers from a severe case of gold fever. "If you had the fever," he tells Pluto Swint, "you wouldn't have time for nothing else.... It gets a man just like liquor does or chasing women...." His delusion illustrates what Caldwell saw as wasteful southern attitudes toward the land.
The title of the book refers to the acre of land Ty Ty sets aside "for God". But Ty Ty's promise is only a formal one, never honored in spirit. He constantly "moves" the acre around to make sure that he never digs on it; he doesn't want his gold going to the church.
Caldwell changes the tone of the book from "farce" in the beginning to "tragedy" at the end.
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Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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