Humphrey Bower

The story of Stan Parker, his wife Amy, and their two children, Ray and Thelma. White's treatment of this family saga is told in overtly mythical terms, with his characters repeatedly universalized as "the man" and "the woman," as though they are living in the Garden of Eden.

Two famous moments stand out in the book. The first is the opening, in which Stan starts clearing the land:

"Then the man took an axe and struck at the side of a hairy tree, more to hear the sound than for any other show more reason. And the sound was cold and loud. The man struck the tree, and struck, till several white chips had fallen. He looked at the scar in the side of the tree. The silence was immense. It was the first time anything like this had happened in that part of the bush."

The second comes near the conclusion, just before Stan's death. A traveling preacher has been telling him about God, and he notices a gob of spittle on the ground through which he glimpses the divine:

"‘Don’t you believe in God, perhaps?’ asked the evangelist, who had begun to look around him and to feel the necessity for some further stimulus of confession. ‘I can show you books,’ he yawned.
Then the old man, who had been cornered long enough, saw, through perversity perhaps, but with his own eyes. He was illuminated.
He pointed with his stick at the gob of spittle.
‘That is God,’ he said.
As it lay glittering intensely and personally on the ground."

White is famous for these little moments of transcendence, which break through the otherwise banal surface of his characters' lives. show less