Overview
In this story, Paul Green, a product himself of a rural upbringing in North Carolina, tells the post Civil War story of the deeply troubled young man, son of a tyrannical white land owner and a poor black woman, who sees education as the means of raising himself and his African-American community out of the bondage of segregation. He strives heroically to fulfill his dream, but in the end is brought down by his own rage at the racist society and the hatred and jealously felt by his white half brother. Throughout his prolific writing life, Green's work focused largely on the struggles of individuals negatively affected by segregation and racism, and, he brought into stark focus, the continuing and discouraging plight of African Americans in the south in the 1920s.