Abra visits Lee, who is thrilled to see her and says that
he wishes he were her father. Abra and Cal talk about the military
and agree that Cal is not well suited to life as a soldier. Cal
decides to take flowers to Cathy’s grave.
Summary: Chapter 54
Adam slowly starts to regain his health. When spring comes,
Cal and Abra have a picnic in an azalea grove, where Abra takes
Cal’s hand and tells him that he must never feel guilty about anything—not
even about Aron. Lee looks through a seed catalogue and thinks of
the garden he will plant in the spring.
A man comes to the door with a telegram announcing that
Aron has been killed in the war. Lee, cursing Aron as a coward,
enters Adam’s room to tell him the news of his son’s death.
Summary: Chapter 55
Adam has a stroke upon hearing the news and lies near
death when Cal returns to the house. When Lee tells Cal what has
happened, the boy is sick with grief and guilt. Cal goes to Abra,
who does her best to comfort him. She takes him back to his house,
where Lee tells Cal and Abra emphatically that they must always
remember that they are in control of their lives and that they are
not automatically doomed to repeat their parents’ mistakes.
Lee takes Cal and Abra to see the dying Adam. Lee tells
Adam that Cal, in informing Aron about his mother, committed a grave
sin out of hurt he felt when he believed that Adam did not love
him. Lee asks Adam to bless Cal before he dies. As Cal gazes down
at him, Adam, with great effort, mouths the single word timshel, and
then his eyes close in sleep.
Analysis: Chapters 51–55
In the final chapters of the novel,the
turnarounds that Cal and Aron experience become complete, as Cal
embraces the idea of timshel and Aron finalizes
his withdrawal from the world by enlisting in the Army. Lee, who
is so often the voice of sense and reason in the novel, cements
Aron’s estrangement from us and from the other characters when he
calls Aron a “coward” upon learning of his death. By calling the
upright Aron a coward, Lee indicates that he thinks the same way
that Abra does—namely, that Aron has retreated into a fantasy world
to avoid dealing with the hard moral choices and temptations of
the world.
