How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
[Chick] and his family just scratched a living. His wife was dead, but he had five daughters and all summer he had them out picking berries or hunting ginseng while there was still a market for it. He raised some chickens, kept a stringy little cow that gave milk in small amounts for a few months whenever she happened to have a calf. None of them had much more clothes that those they carried on their backs, but Chick seemed a happy man. He was free to do whatever he fancied, which was mostly nothing, and there was no rent to pay on any of those tumbledown houses. (1.4)
Tom comes from a line of men who leave the hard work of life up to others while they do as they please. This is the model of masculinity Tom works against in the book. He doesn't want to be this kind of man, and it's hard to blame him.
Quote #2
Nob Dolan proved to be as shiftless as [Polly Ann's] father had been, and almost right away she was working to keep her new home together, just as she had tried to do in the Hannaberry family. As soon as Nob found out how well she could manage […] he started leaving everything to her. He didn't just go off fishing or hunting rabbits the way her father had. He spent his time circulating among the bars and taverns, using up his money while his small buildings ran down. He turned out to be just about a total no-good. (1.18)
Like father, like husband? In this case, that about sums it up. But on top of rambling around while others do his work, Nob is off drinking, too. If you pay close attention, men's drinking habits are mentioned several times, and it's not exactly presented as the best of habits. It's usually linked to a rowdy, lazy, or self-indulgent type of male character. Say nope to the Nob.
Quote #3
He was still too small to hold the [milking] pail between his knees. He had to set it on the barn floor. But he would bore with his forehead into the soft side of the cow and feel as if he had taken a step towards being a man. (2.8)
Even as an eight-year-old boy, Tom is already on a path to manhood markedly different than his father's and grandfather's. He feels that work is an important part of being a man—or really a human, since it's his mom who shows him the ropes. His dad and gramps…not so into that.
Quote #4
"Nob's my pa, but we ain't seen anything of him in eleven years. We get along without him. He wasn't much use afore he left, anyway." Then he straightened his back, facing both men. "And if it comes to that my grampa wasn't much for doing work, either. Ma's the only one who's ever worked hard in our family. I figure it's time I got a job, too." (8.28)
Way to show 'em what's what, Tom. When Tom asks for a job at the mill, he makes it clear that he's nothing like the other men in his family, and he points out that he's learned about hard work and responsibility from his mom. If you thought those qualities were all for men, this book tells you otherwise. Does that mean the book is saying that Tom's mother displays certain masculine qualities in her character? Or is it suggesting that some qualities are good to have regardless of gender?
Quote #5
He felt as if he belonged there at Ackerman and Hook's mill. He had never had the feeling of belonging in a place with grown men before. (9.16)
Tom had very few male influences in his life before he started working at the mill. Besides visits with Birdy and occasional interactions with male neighbors, Tom has spent most of his childhood with his mom and his sisters. He didn't seem to mind, but the new sense of belonging is an extra boost on his path.
Quote #6
Tom admired the way Mr. Hook nodded, crossed the barroom to the indicated door, knocked, and walked right in. Joe Hemphill was sitting at one end of the dining table and opposite were the Coroner and the Sheriff. Tom could tell which was which because the Sheriff wore a gray flannel shirt and had his badge pinned to a breast pocket of it. Only it seemed to Tom as if a small, ordinary like him ought to have changed jobs with the big fat man beside him. Dr. Considine [the coroner] had gray hair and red cheeks and wore a dark-blue suit with a heavy watch chain that barely made it from one pocket of his waistcoat to the other. If he wasn't the biggest man Tom had ever seen, he was the fattest. (23.9)
During the inquiry into Mrs. Breen's death, Tom gets a look at several types of men he's never dealt with before: the clerk at the hotel, the Coroner, the sheriff, and later, the undertaker. These dudes give Tom a glimpse of lifestyles he's never witnessed before. A poor country boy would have no experience with a life that provides extra time and money to indulge in food and drink as much as Dr. Considine does.
Quote #7
Thinking about just where he would set [the barn] and how it was going to look when he had the frame up and the siding on made him take a new look at their house, and he saw for the first time how shabby and run-down looking it was, with shingles missing from the roof, and here and there split clapboards, the front steps sagging, and the paint so nearly weathered away it was hard to tell what color the house had been in the first place. He made his mind up that before he put up the barn he would have to get the house in shape, and that was what he worked at during that summer, outside of his hours at Ackerman and Hook's. (27.2)
This passage directly contrasts Tom with his father. Tom's father never made any repairs on the house. In fact, Tom has to buy all the supplies to do the repairs because there are none around from his father's days there. What a lazybones. Tom sees that a good property owner—and in this case, a good man—should take care of his property, have pride in what is his, and work hard, even if that means pulling nights and weekends after his day job.
Quote #8
Mr. Massey introduced Birdy to them.
"Birdy Morris is the man who built this barn in the first place. For Bert Breen, up on the sand flats by the Forestport line. He's helped Tom Dolan take it down and bring it here. I'd say he was the man to be caller for us."
Lumberjacks didn't step to one side for anybody, but they recognized boss material when they met it, and though Birdy didn't look like much, with his humped should and all, they agreed he ought to be their man. (46.16-18)
There's more to being a man than brute strength and looking like a Disney prince. There's "boss material." In this case, it defies the odds: Birdy has a physical deformity and he's also old and poor, so he's not exactly your typical bodybuilder (or even barn-builder). But, he has knowledge and experience, which the other men easily recognize. That's the kind of man they want as their leader. What do you think "boss material" looks like today, when it isn't limited to men anymore?
Quote #9
The men helped themselves to stacks of sandwiches, to hunks of cheese, to cherry or blueberry or apple pie, and drank quantities of coffee and switchel. [….] They kept in separate groups, the lumberjacks sitting by themselves in the shade of the house, the farmers under the mow floor. The Moucheaud brothers circulated from one group to the other. Working at the feed mill and living in Forestport made them parties of both worlds. Tom, feeling himself the host, tried to do the same, but he felt shy among the lumberjacks and found little to say to them. (47.7)
In rural places in the early 1900s, nothing brought men together like a good ol' barn-raising. Finding himself in a crowd of different types of men, Tom's not 100% comfortable in his own skin yet, and he feels a little awk around the burly lumberjacks. But he's at least starting to get out there and circulate in their world.
Quote #10
Old Sol had been on his way to Forestport, having run out of gin, and the Flanchers damned near ran him and his stump-hocked little black mare into the ditch. They'd kept right on, taking the fork up to the sand flats, and Sol was upset enough so he turned into Armond's drive and stopped to tell Parker Munsey about it. He told Joe Hemphill later on at McGee's bar in Forestport he thought everybody on the river road must have been crazy that night. (54.10)
All of this goes down the night after Tom's barn-raising and just after he has been to the Breen place to retrieve the hidden money. Tom's long, hard day of honest work is a serious contrast to the shenanigans of men out at night drinking and stirring up trouble. Tom is not on the path to being that kind of man, and the novel makes it pretty clear that that's a good thing.
Quote #11
Mr. Hook walked in and said, "Al, I've brought my friend who might be interested in buying that team."
Al turned around and got out of his chair. He shook hands with Mr. Hook, who said, "This is Tom Dolan. Al Rathbun."
They shook hands, too. (61.2-4)
Tom's come a long way from being a nervous kid asking for a job. Now he shakes hands in a business exchange the same way Mr. Hook does. At other points in the novel, Tom has admired Mr. Hook's confident way of dealing with other men. This passage shows that Tom is starting to get to that point, too.