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I was awed by what I saw. All around me was emerald green, and above that, God's own bluest skies, blessed only with two or three perfect rolls of pillow-like clouds. For the first time since I'd left my daddy's land, my heart soared, higher than any mountain I'd ever imagined, up to God's own perfect clouds, and I felt a peace come over me.

In the sixth chapter, "The Land," Paul wakes up to find himself on the land that he immediately knows he must own. Paul feels an instantaneous love for and connection with the land and feels exalted by its beauty. On this spot of land where Paul sleeps, he will later bury Mitchell. Paul will propose to Caroline by the lake, and Caroline—Big Ma of Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry—will, in the course of that novel, bring her granddaughter Cassie out to this lake and tell Cassie the story of her and Paul's courtship. Paul finds himself on the land by chance: he sleeps on that particular spot only because he is exhausted and can walk no longer. For a moment, Paul's troubled life is blessed, and he experiences communion with the divine. Paul is not used to getting what he wants easily and without working for it, and he does not hesitate to devote the next decade of his life to obtaining this land, which has at this moment exalted his soul. This passage is the most explicitly religious passage in the book, and in it we see that Paul recognizes and accepts divine blessings but does not depend on them. He merely uses blessings as guides for appropriate action.

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