Endurance and Loss in Sinclair Ross's "A Field of Wheat"

Introduction: Nature's Hold on Agriculture

Sinclair Ross's "A Field of Wheat" is a poignant testament to both human endurance and the frailty individuals must sometimes admit in the face of fickle nature. Each season, in its turn, brings new concerns for a farmer. An unseasonably warm winter might cause early-sown seeds to sprout and then freeze. Spring might come too late for the grain to mature by harvest. Fall might bring too much rain, washing out strong shoots or blighting them with disease. Summer, the season that seems as though it would be the sweetest, can bring too harsh a sun — or, as in this case, a fast-moving storm that sweeps away everything before human intervention can reach its goal.

Sinclair Ross paints a universal picture of the strain that weather places on agriculture. These are still the factors that can make or break a crop, a year, or even a family.

Martha's Perspective and the Weight of Past Struggles

The point of view of the burned-out farm wife — wavering between desperation and endurance — seals the story's imagery into a portrait of hope set against the inherent gamble of every crop, carried on the back of her husband, John. Martha has seen this gamble before and recognizes it clearly. She can name, without any lightness, the calamities that have ended so many crops before. And this crop is the best one ever.

Martha makes a mental list of how deserving her John is of this success as she ticks off his history: "A crop like this was coming to him. He had had his share of failures and set-backs, if ever a man had, twenty times over... Wasting and unending it was, a struggle, struggle against wind and insects, drought and weeds. Not a heroic struggle to give a man courage and resolve, but a frantic, unavailing one."

Martha views her husband in her mind's eye as she looks out over the field and sees his wake of dust — "hunched black and sweaty on the harrow-cart, twelve hours a day, smothering in dust, shoulders sagged wearily beneath the glare of sun." She is keenly aware that his hope is not for himself, and by extension not for their own generation, but for their children, so that their success might not be tied to the strength of their backs.

Hope, Sacrifice, and the Children's Future

The sacrifices made and the gambles embraced are all in service of a better future for Joe and Annabelle. "It was the children now, Joe and Annabelle: this winter perhaps they could send them to school in town and let them take music lessons." Personal jealousies aside, Martha's hopes for this beautiful crop were to set the children free — to learn a better way to live. "That was why he breasted the sun and dust, a frantic, dogged fool, to spare them, to help them to a life that offered more than sweat and debts."

This dynamic reflects a pattern common to prairie literature: the grinding sacrifice of one generation offered up so that the next might escape the land's relentless demands. Ross uses Martha's interior monologue to give voice to that sacrifice without sentimentalizing it.

Conclusion: Partnership and the Human Spirit

In the face of the hailstorm's devastation, Martha builds anger against the calamity, and just as a wave of that anger takes hold of her she comes upon her John — broken and weeping from the loss that had killed all hope of the bushels and bushels that had just been swinging in the peaceful breeze. Martha takes the burden back upon herself, slipping away so as not to shame him, and begins the quiet work of carrying on.