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Walnut Hill, where the Creighton family buries its dead, represents the precarity of life. It is home to the three Creighton children who died of polio in early childhood, as well as sister Mary, who died in a tragic accident as a teenager. It’s also where Bill “dies” to the family when he decides to go against all his brothers (and his family’s general sense of patriotism) to join the Confederate Army instead of the Union Army. But, as Jethro visits the Hill to feel close to his dead siblings, it also points to the endurance of family ties, even after death. And as the place where Shad and Jethro reunite after the war’s end, it also shows how family ties can survive even terrible losses intact, if not unchanged.
Walnut Hill Quotes in Across Five Aprils
The Across Five Aprils quotes below all refer to the symbol of Walnut Hill. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 3
Quotes
Jethro could not answer. He stared at the cut above Bill’s right eye, from which blood still trickled down his cheek. Somewhere […] a man shouted to his horses, and the shout died away in a cry that ran frightened over the brown water of the creek and into the darkening woods.
He had heard cries often that autumn, all through the countryside. They came at night, wakened him, and then lapsed into silence, leaving him in fear and perplexity. Sounds once familiar were no longer as they had seemed in other days—his father calling cattle in from the pasture, the sheep dog’s bark coming through the fog, the distant creak of the pulley as Ellen drew water for her chickens—all these once familiar sounds had taken on overtones of wailing, and he seemed to hear an echo of that wailing now. He shivered and looked away from his brother’s face.
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Walnut Hill Symbol Timeline in Across Five Aprils
The timeline below shows where the symbol Walnut Hill appears in Across Five Aprils. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3
...Its vivid colors vividly demonstrates nature’s indifference to human tumult. One October afternoon, Jethro visits Walnut Hill , where the Creightons bury their dead. Until the age of seven, Jethro used to...
(full context)
Chapter 12
...and wishes he could go there, but Springfield is so far away. He’s lying on Walnut Hill , trying to make sense of the world on the last Sunday of April 1865,...
(full context)
