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Chapter 16
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in This Tender Land, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family, Community, and Home
Hardship, Injustice, and Compassion
God, Fate, and Choice
Coming of Age and Personal Growth
Storytelling, Music, and Hope
Acceptance and Forgiveness
Summary
Analysis
The next morning, Jack puts Mose and Odie to work in the orchard before driving Albert into town. When he is gone, Odie sneaks up to the farmhouse to check on Emmy. The house is cleaner than expected, and there is a photograph of Jack’s wife and daughter inside his bedroom. Emmy is locked in the second bedroom, which looks like it belonged to a little girl—perhaps Jack’s daughter, who Odie assumes is named Sophie, based on the police officer’s comments the previous day. Jack has nailed the window shut, but Odie picks the lock. The man has not hurt Emmy, but he cries at night, and she wants to leave. Odie investigates the attic, where he finds a curtained-off living area. He is disturbed by the mattress, whose cover has been cut to shreds.
Odie’s earlier offer to get Jack better liquor suggests that Albert is probably accompanying Jack to pick up supplies to build another still. Odie takes advantage of Jack’s absence to make sure Emmy is safe and to investigate the house for more information on their captor. Again, this emphasizes Odie’s craftiness and ingenuity, especially when he is trying to protect his family. Odie’s discoveries solidify his theory that Jack’s probable wife and daughter—Aggie and Sophie—abandoned him, leaving him drunk and depressed. The shredded mattress suggests that Jack has violent tendencies.
Themes
Since Albert is with Jack, Odie locks Emmy back in her room, but he tells her to run if the man tries to hurt her. Outside, he sees a woman drive up to the house, calling Jack’s name. Odie introduces himself as Jack’s nephew. The woman is a neighbor stopping by for her weekly eggs. She questions Odie about his relationship to Jack and asks if he knows Aggie. From their conversation, Odie gleans that Aggie and Sophie ran off in the middle of the night with someone named Rudy over a year ago. The woman assumes that Rudy has deserted Aggie by this point. Odie returns to work, wondering what really happened to Jack’s family.
Just as the boys were unwilling to leave Emmy alone with Jack, Odie will not abandon Albert by escaping with Emmy and Mose now. Here, the novel highlights how a good community cares for all its members, even when it is inconvenient. In contrast, the absence of Jack’s family, Aggie and Sophie, explains his unsettling melancholy. From what the neighbor says, rumor has it that Aggie was romantically involved with another man (Rudy). But the shredded mattress in Jack’s attic implies to Odie that Aggie may have met a more violent fate at her husband’s hands.
Themes
