Chapter One introduces the reader to many important themes which will be repeated and will progress in subsequent chapters. Most important will be the burning desire Buck has to escape rural life.  Being raised with "The Golden Rule" teachings of his Christian parents on their family farm and facing the realities Aven's materialistic boomtown society create a conflict which the novel will never resolve. Buck will spend the rest of his life accumulating a fortune  so he could get as much money as he could accumulate between himself and his family and a life dominated by child labor, debt peonage and unrelenting, uncompensated labor. Buck's words and actions in the first chapter create  a foreshadowing of all the struggles Buck will face during his unconventional career.

"For God's sake..."

"For God's sake"

"I say you ain't to use the Lord's name while you're in the house, Buck."

 

escape the endless treadmill of uncompensated toil and drudgery leading to the grave "rootin' for vittles in this here sorry clay"

child labor "I went to mill and back and made the trade."

"Blue Back speller that cost a quarter bushel of meal"

class envy "lunch bucket"

"fatback, syrup and corn bread"

"Don't let Papa make you plow the big mule, boy," he said, "Big John'll pure pull yore arms out at the sockets. But you got to quit sleepin' in the cotton rows when you ought to be choppin'."

"some of his mother's cush he could take and eat out of the palm of his hand like it was a bowl. He'd nuzzle into that Thanksgiving cush like a hound."

"fill up on cush before they got to turkey. Corn meal and onions with meat stock were cheaper than turkey."