As Rawlings described in a letter to her editor, Max Perkins, “The fish and deer, in fact most of the game, feed ‘on the moon’ — at moon-rise, moon-down, south-moon-over and south-moon-under. The people are conscious at all times of the position of the sun and moon and stars and wind. They feel the Moon under the Earth — south-moon-under.”This idea of some sort of outside force — in this case the moon — controlling life here on Earth is one of the main themes of the book, and Rawlings’ means of communicating this to the reader is through passages describing the characters’ musings. For instance, Lant “marveled… that the moon was so strong that when it lay on the other side of the Earth, the creatures felt it and stirred by the hour it struck. Something beyond a man's immediate choice and will reached through the earth and stirred him”

Source: Daily Sun May 16, 2020 20:03 UTC