ABSTRACT
Muli gives a prospective landowning employer gifts of food, fish caught in the river, free labor, and profuse flattery, hoping that the landowner will make him his sharecropper. The landowner hires him but cheats him at harvest time.
Muli’s description vividly portrays the desperate situation of landless farm laborers, as well as the paternalistic setting in which they work. Muli tries to befriend his employer, which enables his employer to exploit him all the more by taking loans that he never repays.
