 Stacy I. Morgan argues that Attaway calls attention to the mechanical mules not only to contrast with the animals of sharecropping, but to call attention to the mule's prominence within African American history and folklore.Morgan also claims that Attaway "indirectly evokes America's unfulfilled promises of enfranchisement ('forty acres and a mule') as well as the long-standing identification of African American men with the mule as a creature that stubbornly endures despite being much abused as a beast of burden.