3 ideas
The novel argues that famine mortality comes less from absolute lack of food than from who controls it. Meal-mongers like the miser Darby Skinadre buy grain cheaply, hold it back, and sell it on credit at usurious prices, so that hunger becomes a source of profit. Starvation is therefore a product of market speculation and social arrangements rather than of nature alone.
Donnel Dhu gains standing in the community by predicting calamity, and in a time of real disaster his forecasts look like proof of special knowledge. That credibility shields him from suspicion and lets him steer blame onto others. The figure shows how a person who predicts catastrophe can turn a community's fear into personal power and cover.
The novel treats famine as a stress test of the rural hierarchy. Tenants already bound by rent, debt and insecure tenure are the first to be evicted or starved, while agents and middlemen use the emergency to consolidate control. Read this way, a disaster shows who holds power over land and food, and does not treat everyone equally.