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Edd Pearson is the Mississippi planter for whom Ida Mae and George Gladney sharecrop in the 1920s and 1930s. Compared to other planters, Pearson is relatively just and humane—for instance, he keeps fair balance sheets instead of cooking the books to force sharecroppers into unrepayable debt. However, he’s still willing to use terror and violence to get his way: he leads the mob that tortures innocent Joe Lee after Addie B.’s turkeys wander away. When George and Ida Mae decide to move to the North, he doesn’t fully understand why—he isn’t capable of seeing the world from their perspective—but he also doesn’t try to manipulate them into staying.
Edd Pearson Quotes in The Warmth of Other Suns
The The Warmth of Other Suns quotes below are all either spoken by Edd Pearson or refer to Edd Pearson. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Part Two: The Awakening
Quotes
On the drive back home, George searched himself, hard and deep. This wasn’t the first beating, and it wouldn’t be the last. Joe Lee had lived, but he just as easily could have died. And there was not a thing anybody could do about it. As it was, Ida Mae felt George was in danger for asking Mr. Edd about it at all. Next time, it could be him. George had a brother in Chicago. Ida Mae’s big sister, Irene, was in Milwaukee and had been agitating for them to come north.
He made up his mind on the way back. He drove into the yard and went into the cabin to break the news to Ida Mae.
“This the last crop we making,” he said.
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Part Two: Breaking Away
Quotes
George could have left after settlement without saying a word. It was a risk to say too much. The planter could rescind the settlement, say he misfigured, turn a credit into a debit, take back the money, evict the family or whip the sharecropper on the spot, or worse. Some sharecroppers, knowing they might not get paid anyway, fled from the field, right in midhoe, on the first thing going north.
The planters could not conceive of why their sharecroppers would want to leave. The dance of the compliant sharecropper conceding to the big planter year in and year out made it seem as if the ritual actually made sense, that the sharecropper, having been given no choice, actually saw the tilted scales as fair. The sharecropper’s forced silence was part of the collusion that fed the mythology.
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Edd Pearson Quotes in The Warmth of Other Suns
The The Warmth of Other Suns quotes below are all either spoken by Edd Pearson or refer to Edd Pearson. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Part Two: The Awakening
Quotes
On the drive back home, George searched himself, hard and deep. This wasn’t the first beating, and it wouldn’t be the last. Joe Lee had lived, but he just as easily could have died. And there was not a thing anybody could do about it. As it was, Ida Mae felt George was in danger for asking Mr. Edd about it at all. Next time, it could be him. George had a brother in Chicago. Ida Mae’s big sister, Irene, was in Milwaukee and had been agitating for them to come north.
He made up his mind on the way back. He drove into the yard and went into the cabin to break the news to Ida Mae.
“This the last crop we making,” he said.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Two: Breaking Away
Quotes
George could have left after settlement without saying a word. It was a risk to say too much. The planter could rescind the settlement, say he misfigured, turn a credit into a debit, take back the money, evict the family or whip the sharecropper on the spot, or worse. Some sharecroppers, knowing they might not get paid anyway, fled from the field, right in midhoe, on the first thing going north.
The planters could not conceive of why their sharecroppers would want to leave. The dance of the compliant sharecropper conceding to the big planter year in and year out made it seem as if the ritual actually made sense, that the sharecropper, having been given no choice, actually saw the tilted scales as fair. The sharecropper’s forced silence was part of the collusion that fed the mythology.
