"At rent collection time every year, thousands upon thousands of peasants, hungry and cold, were forced to hand over to the landlords rents in grain, not one kernel less despite drought or flood, which they had grown throughout the year with blood and sweat."
 

The walls in this scene convey a sense of imprisonment, while the young family to the left, with the puny child and the exhausted mother with an infant tied to her back, is going to turn over the abundance of grain that they grew with their own hands.