Gilbert describes Endora as “like dancing without music.” Larry, Gilbert’s older brother, is said to “have got away,” but this is not as easy for Gilbert. He can check out of Endora at any time he likes but he always feels guilty for leaving Arnie and Endora, so he always returns. He is stuck in Endora with the burden of his family and the boredom of his life. The impact of his father’s suicide made a lot of responsibilities fall straight on Gilbert, even though they felt “as though he was already dead.” Gilbert’s resentment begins with his mother being a major burden on Gilbert and the rest of the family. Because of his father’s traumatizing death, Bonnie became mentally and physically attached to the house .Gilbert is aware that it is his mother that is holding the family down and he shows a distinct desire to be clear from her devouring nature.
The Nazis inhumanity and brutality slowly diminished his hope and desire to live. Despite Elie’s constant battle, it is from the interaction with other characters that he is able to maintain his hope. Elie depends on his father for support, and his love for his father makes him strengthen his hope and desire to live. When they arrived at the camp, his father said that he would rather Elie to go with his mother than to see what they were going to experience as men. The father began to cry and this was the only time that Elie saw his father cry.
The final separation is Tom being separated from himself, having everyone else run his life, telling him what to do and how, not giving him his own freedom. Both Odysseus and Tom have their fair share of separations from, loss of loyalty, to deaths of loved ones, but they both get passed these road blocks and life and have to face new problems so they can achieve what they are
The ideal man provides for his family materially and is brave on the battlefield. Second, the unbalance plays a part in the lives of the clan members. For instance the main character in the novel, Okonkwo, is extremely focused on being super masculine and finds everything feminine less worthy, leaving him very unbalanced. This unbalance leads him to violate the feminine beliefs such as peace. For instance, during the “Week of Peace” Okonkwo came home to find that his second wife had not returned from her friend’s house in time to cook dinner.
Likewise, the hardships Tom had to endure as a child toughened his soul and sharpened his mind. Abandoned by his alcoholic father, Tom lived in “a miserable tworoom tenement” (Anderson 650) with his mom and siblings. The situation went from bad to worse when his mother passed away, leaving her little children uncared for. Tom, who was just 10 years old at that time, forced himself to overcome grief and to hold himself together for the sake of his siblings. He even shoved his father off in the funeral of his mother and worked arduously to fend for his family.
But then everyone sees the woman's husband. They find he has committed suicide because he couldn't take his wife's screaming. Dr. Adams tells Uncle George to take Nick out of the hut. The doc feels bad that he brought his young son and his son had to see the bloody pregnancy and the guy's suicide. On the way back, Nick is curious and asks a lot of questions about the childbirth and the suicide.
Link is boy, whom his mother started seeing a man, Vince, after his father left them. Vince happens to be very abusing, and holds a grudge against Link and his sister, Carol. Due to his behavior, and after an argument, Carol decides to leave the house and live with her boyfriend. Tension started growing in the house, and so the consequences were large on Link. He started to perform badly at school and so, he decides to follow his sister’s steps and leave the house.
In the beginning of the story, Frost places the wife standing at the top of the stairs and grieving while her husband is at the bottom of the stairs emotionally inferior and indifferent towards the death of their only son. In this sense, the house is flawed and in order to correct this flaw, the man begins to climb the stairs. Once the man and wife are both on the same level, the wife runs to the bottom of the stairs and threatens to leave the house entirely because of the man’s indifferent emotions. The husband wants his wife to stay home, because he feels she is overreacting. However the wife leaves, confining the husband to his home alone.
Due to his lack of friends he tries to create a bond with Sam and it makes it even more valuable due to Hally’s loneliness. He would always “try out a few ideas but sooner or later” he’d “end up in there with” Sam and Willie. He would always look for something to do and always wonder what he should do and think of some ideas but in the end he knew that they would always be there and he would never be let down by them. Hally feels a strong sense of humiliation and all of it because of his crippled and alcoholic father whom made him feel a constant let down in his life. When Hally was young his father “was dead drunk on the floor of the Central Hotel Bar” and Sam helped Hally bring him home.
The wife of the father commits suicide, leaving the father and the boy alone. The wife claims that she has “taken a new lover” (McCarthy 57). The wife’s new lover is Death and she finally wants to be united with him. The wife uses death as an escape from the harsh world. She is so terrified of the world that she is willing to abandon her new born son, over riding all of her maternal instincts.