The block of wood that Gertie has been working on carving plays a huge role as a symbol in the book. It is first introduced in the very first chapter, when Gertie explains that she just can't figure out the right face for it. For a long time, she considers the face of Judas: "'Not Judas with his mouth all drooly, his hand held out fer the silver, but Judas given th thirty pieces away. I figger they's many a one does meanness fer money -- like Judas. But they's not many like him gives th money away an feels sorry onct they've got it'" (23). At this point in the book, "There was only the top of a head, tilted forward a little, bowed, or maybe only looking down, but plainly someone there, crouching a secret being hidden in the wood, waiting to rise and shed the wood and be done with the hiding" (48).
When Gertie is given the money from Henley's savings and thinks she can buy the Tipton Place, the land she wants, "She had her land -- as good as had it -- and the face was plain, the laughing Christ, a Christ for Henley" (81). When the owner of the land tells her he wants her to have it, she thinks, "It was Christ in the block of wood after all. Soon he would rise up out of his long hiding into the firelight, the laughing Christ...Her Christ had to be that way...Wicked she had maybe been all these years because she could see only Judas in the wood -- the Judas she had pitied giving back the silver. Pity, pity. Was pity for a Judas sinful?" (127). But when she finds out she has to go to Detroit to be with Clovis and can't keep the land, she thinks, "...she had always known that Christ would never come out of the cherry wood. Seemed like all week he'd cried for her knife in the firelight, and now he was gone" (145).
When she goes to Detroit, she has the block of wood mailed to their home. She wonders how long it will take for it to get there, asking herself, "Where was it now?...Was everything lost?" (161). It arrives: "If right now she and the wood could be alone together, she would bring out the face. His face was so clear -- Christ coming down through the October field with the red leaves in one hand, an ax in the other. It was so plain, a little like Henley's face" (226). But she hardly has time to work on it: "Gertie had, some time ago, promised herself a Christmas gift. She would, she had decided, pleasure herself...with working again on the block of wood. But with all the children home there was so little room" (289).
When Cassie dies, Gertie becomes depressed, staying in her bedroom for days. She is preoccupied with the idea of finishing the figure in the block of wood. But she has lost direction in terms of what to carve. "The man in the wood at first seemed far away...the knife fumbled, a lost knife hunting a lost man in the wood" (417). She begins to work on it: "One side now was no block of wood at all, but the cloth-draped shoulders of someone tired or old, more likely tired, for the shoulders, the sagging head, bespoke a weariness unto death" (438). Then, "She knew the hands would not be reaching out, but holding -- holding lightly a thing they could not keep. The head was drooped in sorrow, looking once at the thing it had to give away" (444).
The block of wood is the one thing Gertie has control over in her life. And it's not just something she has the power to shape, to care about, and to make into whatever she wants as a literal block of wood to be carved. It also represents her life; her feelings about herself, the direction she's going in, and her faith in humanity. At the beginning, she is unsure of herself and the way she wants to go (pondering over what face is "hiding" in the wood). When she feels confident about buying the Tipton Place, the block will be a laughing Christ, happy and self-assured. When she arrives in Detroit, and for a long time after that, it's cast aside, representing her confusion (but also her faith in her ability to return to her original goals: both the Tipton Place and the face of the laughing Christ). After Cassie's death, the figure becomes sorrowful, full of regret -- it's pretty clear that it symbolizes her desires and her dreams of being independent at home in Kentucky, and her faith in the world and the people around her.
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