The Wild Sow

The Prologue features a inciting incident that begins with a wild sow. Both Alice and James find signs that there's a wild sow with babies. James wants to go deeper into the woods to find the wild sow. It is when they are tracking the sow that they come across the boy who's been lynched.

Alice herself muses about how differently the wild sow is from the domesticated sows on the farm. She thinks that the wild sow has more dignity and certainly commands more respect. As an older woman, she exhibits many of the same wild traits, instead of being a 'domesticated' black woman.

The Lynched Boy

The lynched boy is the inciting conflict at the beginning of the story. It also sets the tone for James having to be sent away because he won't be silent about the way whites treat blacks...