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The mahogany capitalists and their overseers have only one aim: to make each slave fell four tons of timber a day. They have found that flogging with a bull whip has a poor effect on physique, so instead, they "hang" the workers when necessary, i.e., leave them suspended from a tree by ropes, where red ants, ticks, chiggers and mosquitoes can liven them up. Hanging is done at night so as to add to the physical anguish "the unspeakable, inexplicable horror . . . that the Indian feels of phantoms and specters."
John Brown Heat. By midnovel, Traven has piled atrocity upon atrocity, and the doctrinaire is in full command. The villainous capitalist is playing the old, old game of raping Candido's sister. He is also happily chopping off the ears of Candido and one of his little sons. As for the workers, they are beginning to make such set speeches as: "Over the whole country the fire is spreading, the first flames are rising everywhere . . . Down with the dictatorship!"
Finally, like a man departing suddenly into a dream, Traven forgets all about his principal characters, including even the invaluable piglets, and turns his novel into a featureless mass drama which he can neither inspire nor bring to a conclusion. His Rebellion winds up as third-rate Uncle Tom's Cabin, with the debilitating difference that the slavery Traven writes about with John Brown heat has already been abolished.