Cotton and Corn Fields near the Big Woods (Location Key)

Before they reach the big woods, the hunters travel past the "skeletoned cotton- and corn-fields . . . hard, gaunt, and motionless beneath the gray rain" and houses and barns ("The Old People," 206; Go Down, Moses, 168). The fields are "skeletoned" at this time of year because they've been harvested. The houses and barns mark the the last point "where the hand of man had clawed for an instant, holding, the wall of the wilderness" that lies just beyond them (206). The question which is more feral - the wilderness or the hand of man - is nicely complicated by Faulkner's use of the word "claw."