Dec 16, 2009

Acres and Pains | Themes

The basic theme in Acres and Pains is that civilized man and rural life are not compatible. In what starts out as a journey back to nature, the author discovers that there are no Rousseauistic noble savages among the locals — who constantly take advantage of his pocketbook, gullibility, and inexperience in a rural environment. The reality of chiggers, dry wells, cracked walls, dying trees, termites, and mosquitoes soon undermines his idealized vision of country life.