"'Don't you see?' he cried. 'Don't you see? This whole land, the whole South, is cursed, and all of us who derive from it, whom it ever suckled, white and black both, lie under the curse? Granted that my people brought the curse onto the land: maybe for that reason their descendants alone can—not resist it, not combat it—maybe just endure and outlast it until the curse is lifted.'"
Isaac possesses a pretty integrated perspective on slavery. He believes that the institution of slavery has brought a curse upon the south. This curse is reflected simultaneously in the subjugation of people (slaves) and of nature (destruction of the environment, animal depopulation, etc.) in the same manner.
"I gonter tell you something to remember: anytime you wants to git something done, from hoeing out a crop to getting married, just get the womenfolks to working at it. Then all you needs to do is set down and wait. You remember that."
Turl is a prejudiced person. He propagates stereotypes often in his speech. This excerpt reveals his preconception about women as easily taken advantage of. Strangely enough he bases this idea on a belief in women's integrity and industry. Secondly, he believes that he's appealing to the men's fundamental desire by offering a way out of work, proposing yet another stereotype about laziness in black men.
"He had already relinquished, of his will, because of his need, in humility and peace and without regret yet apparently that had not been enough, the leaving of the gun was not enough. He stood for a moment--a child, alien and lost in the green and soaring gloom of the markless wilderness. Then he relinquished completely to it. It was the watch and the compass. He was still tainted. He removed the linked chain of the one and the looped thong of the other from his overalls and hung them on a bush and leaned the stick beside them and entered it."
As a deeply spiritual and borderline superstitious person, Isaac desires desperately to reconnect with nature. On his journey in the woods he tells himself that he must abandon every tool of man in order to really discover something about the woods. He leaves behind his possessions, making himself completely vulnerable to nature. This is an act of penance for him, motivated by guilt in recognizing man's mistreatment of the natural environment.
"[The wilderness] seemed to lean inward above them, above himself and Sam and Walter and Boon in their separate lurking-places, tremendous, attentive, impartial and omniscient, the buck moving in it somewhere, not running yet since he had not been pursued, not frightened yet never fearsome but just alert also as they were alert, perhaps already circling back, perhaps quite near, perhaps conscious also of the eye of the ancient immortal Umpire."
On their hunting trip, the men become conscious of a strange animation to the forrest itself. The allusion to an umpire implies an inherent capacity for judgement on Mother Nature's part. Isaac wonders if maybe the deer can sense the same force and consequently makes its decisions with a renewed awareness of its own subjectivity.
