How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.[Part].Section.Paragraph)
Quote #4
[…] and he would rise and dress and eat his breakfast by lamplight to walk the four miles to the mill by sunup, and exactly one hour after sundown he would enter the house again, five days a week, until Saturday. (3.1.8)
Here's a real man: Rider works long hours at back-breaking labor at the mill, and brings home the bacon every Saturday to his wife. He's a big contrast to Fonsiba's husband, who sits around and reads and doesn't take responsibility for supporting his wife. Rider's painted as kind of hyper-masculine—big and muscular, tossing around giant logs like they're toothpicks.
Quote #5
"I done taught you all there is of this settled country," Sam said. "You can hunt it good as I can now. You are ready for the Big Bottom now, for bear and deer. Hunter's meat," he said. "Next year you will be ten. You will write your age in two numbers and you will be ready to become a man. Your pa [...] promised you can go with us then." (4.1.24)
If you were wondering at what age a male would be considered to be a man in the 19th- century South, here's your answer: ten. Okay, we're kidding. Sam is saying this to Isaac to prepare him for the challenges of hunting. But by saying this, he also instills in this young boy the idea that being a man is something he will have to learn.
Quote #6
For six years now he had heard the best of all talking. It was of the wilderness, the big woods, bigger and older than any recorded document:--of white man fatuous enough to believe he had bought any fragment of it, of Indian ruthless enough to pretend that any fragment of it had been his to convey [...] It was of the men, not white nor black nor red but men, hunters, with the will and hardihood to endure and the humility and skill to survive, and the dogs and the bear and the deer juxtaposed and reliefed against it, ordered and compelled by and within the wilderness in the ancient and unremitting contest according to the ancient and immitigable rules which voided all regrets and brooked no quarter;--the best game of all, the best of all breathing and forever the best of all listening, the voices quiet and weighty and deliberate for retrospection and recollection and exactitude among the concrete trophies... (5.1.2)
Even talking about hunting is awesome. It's almost like hunting is bred into the very nature of men. Oh, right, it is.