The Man Who Saw the Flood

"When the flood waters recede, the poor folk along the river start from scratch."
In Richard Wright's "The Man Who Saw the Flood," the catastrophic flood-losses facing a poor family of sharecroppers reveal the circumstances that force the emancipated but still ignorant and debased blacks to become indebted to and thus re-enslaved by the same whites from whom they received freedom. Wright's resigned yet resolute protagonists show that even hollow hopes can drive people to noble perseverance in the face of a bleak fate. This theme is reinforced and developed through the dynamic and symbolic setting of the story.
The most prominent relation of setting to theme in this story is the bleakness of the flood-devastated land itself. The "stark fields" surrounding the family's "mudcaked cabin" are completely devastated. "Every tree, blade of grass, and stray stick had its flood mark: caky, yellow mud ... cracking thinly here and there in spider-web fashion." The mud, a motif repeated time after time in this story, is an entrapping and suffocating force- similar to the suffocating debt suffered by the poor sharecroppers. "'Ef we keeps on like this tha white man'll own us body n soul,'" laments Tom, the hardworking father of the family. The white man- an almost devilish figure who is alluded to have power over his debtors' very souls, is as stifling as the mud that has destroyed nearly everything the family owned.
Images of death and burial also abound- further emphasis of the wretched fate of this family. Their cabin looks "as though its ghost was standing beside it," and inside, the drawers of the dresser "[bulge] like a bloated corpse" while the mattress of the bed is "like a giant casket forged of mud." In such a ravaged environment there can be no hope or reason for continuing- yet somehow the family finds the motivation and strength to bend themselves to the monumental task of rebuilding. Their strength, springing from natural reservoirs of human resiliency and