IMPORTANT QUOTATIONS - QUOTES AND ANALYSIS (continued)

When Adam stands before the Committee leaders to sign the muster book, it is a turning point for himself and his relationship with his father. Adam describes Moses in this way:

His eyes fixed on me, and I felt that they were boring inside of me and reading every thought. For myself, I had the feeling that I was looking at my father for the very first time, not seeing him as I had always seen him in the vague wholeness of age and distance, but looking at the face of a surprisingly young man, his wide, brown face serious and intent upon me, his dark eyes shadowed in their inquiry, his broad full-lipped mouth tight and thoughtful. How was it, I wondered, that I had never noticed before what a strikingly handsome man he was? How was it that I had seen in him only the strength of his overbearance and not the thewed strength of those massive brown arms spread on the desk with the white shirt sleeves rolled high and carelessly? It was no wonder that men listened to him and heeded his words. (68)

The distinctly sensual nature of this description may seem odd to readers, even discomfiting. But taken in context, it makes more sense: Adam is narrating the story some time in the future, he knows his father will die in a matter of hours, and so he tries to make his father as concrete and as real a person as he can remember. The physical characteristics become symbolic of Moses as a Committee leader, an aspect Adam could not see before because he was his father's son and thus blinded by the tensions between them. This is the first sign that the war is..........

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