The Sweetness of Water

Isabelle is George’s wife and Caleb’s mother. While she does not seem to have much, including the warmth of her husband, she loves her son and grieves for him deeply when she believes he is dead. Like George’s lack of skill, "she had no green thumb, but that hadn’t stopped her from planting the squat and unpretty shrubs that paved the trail” (15). She is often content abandoning her social activity in lieu of sitting on the porch and talking the afternoon away with her friend Mildred.

While distant, she befriends Landry before he dies and consoles Prentiss after Landry’s murder. When she first sees Landry, he is stealing some of George’s socks from the line. She is startled at first, but she eventually offers the socks to Landry because she recognizes his need and thus his humanity in that need. Her warmth is exhibited through her concern of practical matters—she cooks meals for the men to eat after their hard labor in the peanut fields every day, and she knits socks for Landry as a gift, though she is only able to finish one before Landry is murdered.

The expectations of being a mild-mannered, well-dressed Southern socialite are thwarted by her embrace of the young formerly enslaved men and the support she offers her husband when the town turns against him. Though she is expected to remain mild-mannered and uphold the status quo, she finds that she is no longer able to tolerate the dishonesty and prejudice that exist among the elite townspeople, so she quite literally walks away from it. Isabelle’s character changes slowly at first but then falls into a clear arc from socialite to a hard-working landowner, who stands firmly by her principles and commits to establishing her husband’s legacy by making sure his land is used for the greater good.

Caleb is George and Isabelle’s son and joins the war as a member of the Confederate Army. His decision to go to war is not out of a desire to fight for his country but rather to be close to August Webler, his best friend with whom he develops a romantic relationship. When August returns from war after sustaining an injury, he tells the Walkers that Caleb was killed heroically, though he knows Caleb was likely killed for deserting his fellow soldiers. When Caleb comes home and reveals that he was injured and held hostage by the Union army after deserting his post, he struggles to find his place in Old Ox. He wrestles with his identity throughout the novel as well as his masculinity in a time when cowardice was unacceptable.

Like George, Caleb pivots between the expectations of the traditional South and the advancement of a new nation. He represents a younger generation that is less concerned with preserving tradition and more concerned with finding a new identity. His mother tells him, “you got way too much of your father in you, I swear. Not a Southern bone in your body” (82). Like his father, Caleb also has a deep sense of right and wrong, which is displayed in his decision to break Prentiss out of jail, travel to safer Northern territory with the now fugitive, and in his willingness to kill his former lover to protect him.

Caleb’s decision to turn down a good manual job to continue his journey north also symbolizes how his generation straddles the past of pre-war America and the future of industrialized America. While the job would pay well there in Convent, he chooses instead to take his chances farther where new employment opportunities await them both.

Prentiss and Landry are brothers and formerly enslaved by Ted Morton. When they are freed under the Emancipation Proclamation, they set out on foot through the woods and head North. Prentiss, the older brother, plans for him and Landry to make enough money in Old Ox that they can afford to move north. Landry, who was severely beaten while at Morton’s plantation, does not speak. He often roams the wilderness by himself when not working on George’s farm. The narrator says, "Landry went where he was expected, and there was bravery to be found in someone willing to either go forward or face his fear head-on, unblinkingly, even if it sometimes stopped him right where he stood” (26).

Prentiss understands his brother in a way the rest of the world does not:

the grace of his brother, the hum of curiosity hidden behind his distant stare, the parts of him others failed to notice. His fingers were especially delicate, graceful things, and their mother would often say they were fit for playing an instrument. (32)

Landry who finds his identity in his own silence and the forest that surrounds the Walker’s farm, is killed in the very forest where he feels most comfortable.

The symbolism of the young men as the foundation of a new nation spans the entire novel. While both brothers seek a new beginning, only Prentiss escapes to freedom. Landry, silenced by the chains of slavery, is killed by August after witnessing his and Caleb’s sexual encounter at the pond. Landry becomes the sacrifice that brings out Prentiss’s, Caleb’s, and George’s strength so that freedom for others is possible. This symbolism is established early in the novel when the narrator reveals that Landry serves as the whipping boy once a month for all the other slaves’ wrongdoings.