Chapters 19 - 20 Summary and Analysis

Chapter 19

Carlo returns to Gagliano as winter approaches. One night the town crier announces that the pig doctor is coming the next day. All the women bring their pigs to the town square the next day and the pig doctor, a tall, red haired man with a mustache, castrates them all. He is impressively efficient and skillful. None of the pigs die later from infection.

The sergeant is transferred out of town and his successor is quite different - young, blond and blue-eyed. This was his first post. He is shocked by the dishonesty in town. Don Cosimino has begun to give mail directly to the political prisoners, without running it by the censors in Matera. But the censorship rules change and Don Luigi is given the authority to read the mail. Carlo notes that this brings one new...