Loss of Innocence Theme Analysis

This method proved to be one that Chris always used in any dealings with my grandfather. When the bludgeoning words came […] Chris never seemed, like myself, to be holding back with a terrible strained force for fear of letting go and speaking out […] He would not argue or defend himself […] He simply appeared to be absent, elsewhere.

He missed the horses, I thought with selfish satisfaction, more than he missed his family. I could visualize the pair, one sorrel and one black, swifting through all the meadows of summer.

And soon, because I desperately wanted to, and because everyday mercifully made me older, quite soon I would be able to reply with such a lightning burst of knowingness that would astound him, when he spoke of the space or was it some black sky that never ended anywhere beyond this earth. Then I would not be innerly belittled for being unable to figure out what he would best like to hear. At that good and imagined time, I would not any longer be limited. I would not any longer be young.

I need to say something really penetrating, something that would show him I knew the passionate truth of his conviction. “I bet –” I said, “I bet you’ll sell a thousand, Chris.” Two years ago, this statement would have seemed self-evident, unquestionable. Yet now, when I had spoken, I knew that I did not believe it.

No human word could be applied. The lake was not lonely or untamed. These words relate to people, and there was nothing of people here. There was no feeling about the place. It existed in some world in which man was not yet born. I looked at the grey reaches of it and felt threatened. It was like the view of God which I had held since my father’s death. Distant, indestructible, totally indifferent.