Empty

Empty – officially named Elizabeth, in honor of Paul’s mother – is the cotton plantation that the Halifax family own. It is situated in Mississippi, on the bank of the Yazoo River. Its nickname is a reflection on the soullessness of its owners, and the hollowing effect it has on those who are forced to exist in such a moral vacuum. Despite the vastness and beauty of the scenery, there is “no escape. Surrounded by dense, teeming wilderness – swamp maple, ironwood, silverbell, and pine as far, high, and tangled as the mind could imagine – and treacherous waters where teeth, patient and eternal, waited beneath to sink themselves into the flesh, it was the perfect place to hoard captive peoples” (27). Similarly inescapable is the intense Mississippi heat, a personified force which tries to “burn,” “suffocate” and “drown” its victims, adding to the pervading atmosphere of oppression (6). The cotton fields, where...