 The moral conflict that constituted the theme of the first volume evolves into a social one, the land collective property, englobing the first.During forced collectivisation, a process that dramatically changed rural landscape, an aged Ilie Moromete, abandoned by his sons and his wife, left by his old friends, no longer seems to be able to fit.Relevant pages describing Moromete make points against the "new society" credo of his youngest son Niculae, by now a young man sent to his own village by the Romanian Communist Party to carry out propaganda in favour of new collective farms.