One Foot in Eden

“A mile from the North Carolina line I turned off the black-top and headed into the valley called Jocassee. The word meant ‘valley of the lost’ to the Cherokee, for a princess named Jocassee had once drowned herself there and her body had never been found. The road I followed had once been a trail, a trail De Soto had followed four hundred years ago when he’d searched these mountains for gold. De Soto and his men had found no riches and believed the land worthless for raising corn. Two centuries after De Soto, the Frenchman Michaux would find something here rarer than gold, a flower that existed nowhere else in the world.”

Will explores the theme of Cultural Connections to the Land by explaining the history of Jocassee. The land carries specific memories connected to colonization, and this significance is invoked when Will thinks of the Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto, who came looking for gold. Will alludes to the French painter Henri Michaux to create a contrast with De Soto’s actions. Rather than exploiting the land, Michaux captured the beauty of the Appalachian land in his paintings, preserving it instead of exploiting it.

“It was as much a part of Billy as his own shadow. But as I watched him finish his row I knew he couldn’t allow himself to think about how uncertain his livelihood was. To farm a man did have to act like a mule—keep his eyes and thoughts on the ground straight in front of him. If he didn’t he couldn’t keep coming out to his fields day after day.”

Billy’s connection to the land demoralizes him at times, and Rash shows this mood by creating a simile that equates Billy to a plodding mule. Despite the difficulty and the unpredictability of farming, Billy has no choice but to continue to work the land, hoping to make a profit. The passage also emphasizes the necessity of ignoring life’s risks and focusing on the work at hand in order to maintain the determination to persevere.

“Holland was talking about how some men weren’t much bothered by the killing. I had been, and I carried with me the glazed eyes of every Japanese soldier I’d taken the life from on Guadalcanal. But I’d fought with men like Holland who seemed bred for fighting the same way gamecocks are. Their eyes lit up when the shooting started. They were utterly fearless, and you thanked God they were on your side instead of the other.”

Will’s memory of fighting in the Battle of Guadalcanal reminds him of the inherent violence in human nature. Like the earlier comparison of Billy to a mule, Rash uses another animalistic