Summary, Characters, Setting and Theme of A Deal In Wheat | Grade 12 optional English
Settings in A Deal In Wheat:
The story uses the setting of Kansas and Chicago. Major characters Sam and Emma live in Kansas.
Theme in A Deal In Wheat:
This story shows the power of money. Money can control everything. Poor farmers are controlled by rich capitalists. Rich captures any market. At last, innocent and poor farmers become victims of the misuse of power and money.
Characters in A Deal in Wheat :
Sam Lewiston: The main hero of the story who is a farmer. His wife is Emma. They live in Southern Kansas.
Emma Lewiston: She is wife of Sam Lewiston.
Hornung: He is known as ‘The Bull’. He is the owner of the two companies. His companies are leading in the wheat market.
Truslow: He is the owner of one company His company is leading in the wheat market. He is also known as `The Bear’.
Mr. Gates: He is an employee of Hornung’s company.
Going: Another employee of Hornung’s company.
Merriam: Another employee of Hornung’s company.
Kimbark: Another employee of Hornung’s company.
Bridges:Another employee of Truslow.
Billy: Hornung’s broker
Cyrus Ryder :He works as a detective.
He was working for Hornung in the story.
Summary of A Deal In Wheat | Grade 12 optional English:
‘A Deal in a Wheat’ is a story written by Frank Norris. This story is about a wheat farmer, Sam Lewiston and his wife, Emma Lewiston. They are wheat farmers. They used to sell their wheat to survive. They sold it to an organization named ‘Bridges & Co.., Grain Dealers’. The company was owned by Truslow.
One day they became worried by knowing that the price of the wheat they were selling was lowered to sixty two cents. It caused problems to them because they couldn’t afford their daily expenses. It was a very low price. Sam went to the company and met Bridges. Sam requested Bridges to raise the price of the wheat. Bridges refused to increase the price.
Now, it was very diificult for him to run his family. Without finding any hope of survival, they planned to shift to Chicago. Sam was ready to work in a hat factory of Joe in Chicago. He left his farming.
There were two important wheat-selling companies at that time. One was run by Truslow and the other was led by Hornung. They hated each other in the wheat-selling market. But Hornung had a desire to own the whole wheat market.
Truslow didn’t have a high amount of stock of wheat himself. Hornung sent Mr. Gates (one of his employees) to Truslow’s office to buy wheat with him. Hornung planned Truslow to buy 100,000 bushels of wheat from him. He wanted to set the price $1. 10 for profit. Truslow was ready to buy it. He said that he was going abroad by taking the wheat. Infact, but he didn’t go to abroad.
Going, Kimbark, and Merriam are three employees of Hornung. They worked in an auction house. They had monopoly in the auction house to sell wheat. They set the price of wheat at $1.50 a bushel. But, one day they found that someone else was selling the wheat in the auction house. They were shocked after seeing it. They believed that their rival was abroad. Kenneg was selling it. They bought 1000 bushels each from Kenneg after getting order from Hornung. Again they bought 80,000 bushels of wheat at $1.50 each from bid. Now, Hornung was the sole owner in the wheat market.
Hornung, with his broker Billy and a detective named Cyrus, were talking about the wheat they had bought from Kenneg. The detective was checking out whose wheat it was and where it originated from. At last, he found out that wheat he bought was the wheat he sold to Truslow. Truslow fooled him by saying that he was moving the wheat abroad. In fact, he was just moving the trains around Chicago. He reaslized it and raised the price of wheat to $2 a bushel.
On the other part of the story, Sam had arrived in Chicago.
No sooner had he started to work in the factory than the factory was closed. It was closed because it failed to pay the debt. Now, he had left no option to send his wife except to sister’s home.He slept on park benches.
He used to enjoy free bakery from “Vienna bakery’’. It used to give free bread to anyone who asked at night. The line formed by the people who wanted to eat free bread were known as ‘the bread line’. After the price hike of wheat, Vienna bakery stopped to distribute free bread. Sam was sad after knowing it.
The next day Sam started a street cleaning job. Slowly and gradually, he became inspector of cleaning job. He could afford to drive a red wagon. After becoming reach, he came to know about reasons behind wheat market’s price hike. He hated those companies who raised the price for a higher profit.