I’d rather die on starvation than live the land! (Metaphor)
The state of Jeeter’s affairs was critical. All his attempts to start farming were in vain because he didn’t have money and no one wanted to lend him some. But still he hasn’t give up hoping that one day he will be a true farmer. The option to move somewhere where he can get a job was a nonsense for him. “Working in cotton mills might be all right for some people, he said, but as for him, he would rather die of starvation than leave the land.” In seven years his views on the subject had not been altered; and if anything, he was more determined than ever to remain where he was at all costs. The metaphor expresses Jeeter’s negative and even egotistic attitude to the job out of tobacco road.
City ways ain’t God-given (Metaphor)
This metaphor shows how poorly Jeeter regards life in a city and gives an explanation why he doesn’t go to work there. He would rather live without food and money, but he won't leave the tobacco road. And, as he is a highly religious man, he also considers that city life is a sinful life and he is higher than this: “It wasn’t intended for a man with the smell of the land in him to live in a mill in Augusta. Maybe it’s all right for some people to do that, but God never meant for me to do it.” Jeeter is sure that God wont be glad if he will move to the city and work there, because He has prepared something special for His perfect son and servant and Jeeter is patiently waiting for something he doesn’t know but he is sure it will happen soon.
I’d feel like the chicken with his head cut off living shut up in a mill all the time (Simile)
Jeeter desperately claims that city life is not for him because it is a sinful place and God wouldn’t be happy if he go there. “…God never meant for me to do it. He put me on the land to start with, and I ain’t leaving it.” It is not clear, what made him think so, but it sounds more like a lame excuse of his laziness. The simile here is used with the purpose of highlighting how Jeeter would feel if he goes to work to the big city. Of course, the meaning of the utterance is hyperbolized for the better and more dramatic effect to the listener.
A big surprise – to wake up in the morning (Metaphor)
Ada, Jeeter’s wife, was an old and sick lady, constant lack of food was torturing her and she truly believed that she would die almost any day: “She weighed only seventy-two pounds now; once she had been a large woman, and she had weighed two hundred pounds twenty years before.” She was surprised when she woke up in the morning and discovered that she was still alive, every day she was thinking of a good new dress to be buried in but she didn’t have money for that. The metaphor shows how Ada treated her life, her sureness of close death and hopes of getting a good fashionable dress to be buried in.
A man who liked to grow things in the ground (Metaphor)
Jeeter went to sleep, made up his mind that he will borrow a mule in the morning a plow a land, actually, he went to bed with the same thoughts every evening. Unfortunately, this time was the last one. The house burned and Jeeter with his wife didn’t wake to save themselves. It was a big fire and they didn’t have any chances to survive. People came there too late when the house had burned to the bone. Lov, their son in law, felt pity for them. He said that Jeeter was a man “who liked to grow things in the ground” but this metaphor is rather ironic because, actually, Jeeter Has never grew anything by himself, he was just wasting time talking about it. The metaphor represents Jeeter as a person he wanted to be rather that a person he really was.
