Bursting into the classroom in the middle of a lesson, Ledda's father justified his position by saying that he needed the boy's help for his agricultural work, as Gavino was his eldest son.
In scenes that feature in Padre padrone, he went on to say that school was a luxury that poor shepherds could not afford, and demanded that his son be handed over to him.
Baddevrùstana is only a few kilometres from Siligo, but the only means of transport the family had was a mule, so the journey seemed long to the young Ledda.
Around the same period, his father's olive grove was destroyed by frost, and so Gavino and his brothers were denied the prospect of inheriting such valuable property.
Ledda began to develop a passion for learning and a dogged determination to free himself from his life as a poor, illiterate shepherd trapped in a backward environment.
When he left Sardinia, he barely knew a word of standard Italian - when he did not know how to respond to the orders of a superior officer, he would get by with "Signorsì!"
Working and studying day and night, with the help of an officer and of a fellow soldier, Ledda's level of Italian improved considerably.
The fact that Ledda left the army was frowned on by his father and by others in Siligo, who thought that he was overconfident and too ambitious for a boy of his social class, and that he was bound to end up broke.
Based on the book, in 1977 Paolo and Vittorio Taviani directed Padre padrone (also known as Father and Master) for Italian television, which won the Palme d'Or prize at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival.