Wheat Symbol Analysis

Pete’s wheat crop symbolizes the narrator’s pregnancy—but more broadly, it symbolizes people’s inability to control nature. The story sets up the relationship between the wheat and the narrator’s current pregnancy by noting that Pete planted the wheat 10 weeks ago, the same week that the narrator conceived. And just as the narrator knows that her pregnancy will soon end in another miscarriage, Pete is preparing to give up on the crop—which is doing poorly in the heat—and let the cattle eat it.

In both cases, neither the narrator nor Pete can control acts of nature that seem to make little sense. Pete, for his part, has no control over the weather, which will determine the success of his wheat. When the heat never breaks, which kills his crop, all Pete can do is accept his misfortune and try something else. Similarly, the narrator’s recurrent miscarriages seem uncontrollable—no matter what the narrator does, nature seems to thwart her ability to carry a child. The course of her pregnancy follows much the same course as Pete’s wheat: it begins with a glimmer of hope that things might work out this time, and it seems destined to end with the narrator feeling powerless and devastated. The narrator’s final thought, in which she mentally tells Pete to let the cows eat the struggling wheat, suggests her disheartened acceptance that this pregnancy has failed.