How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
That Father loved us, I have never had any doubt; he had simply loved the doctor more. This was the root of my mother's hatred for Dr. Warthrop. She was jealous. She was betrayed. And it was that sense of betrayal that led to the most vehement quarrels between them. (2.38)
That his father loved the doctor more than his own family must've been a tough pill to swallow for Will Henry. Can you imagine your dad coming home from work and openly declaring that he loves his boss more than you? Yeah, us neither.
Quote #2
Before joining her in the parlor to face her fire, a fire only negligibly less intense than that of hell, he always kissed me on the forehead, always ran his hand through my hair, always closed his eyes with me as I said my bedtime prayer. My entreaties to heaven complete, I would open my eyes and stare into the kind face and gentle eyes of my father, secure in that tragically naïve way of all children that he would always be with me. (2.68)
As a kid, you really do have this weird faith that your parents are immortal. When you're young the idea that they will someday leave you is as foreign as the concept of naps being awesome. (If you haven't yet reached the age where you revel in taking naps, don't worry—it will hit, and it will be glorious.) This security in his parent's permanence makes their tragic deaths so much harder to cope with.
Quote #3
Though he towered over my hunched and shivering frame, a grown man at the height of his powers, in my mind's eye I saw the sick and lonely boy, a stranger in a strange land, writing to the man whose attention and affections he desperately desired, a man who would reward his filial devotion with the ultimate indignity of paternal rejection: letters unopened, tossed into an old box, forgotten. (5.90)
Warthrop's dad was just as cold and unfeeling as Warthrop is—perhaps even worse. The acorn never falls too far from the tree, as they say. But how can Warthrop raise Will Henry any differently without ever knowing what it's like to have a loving familial unit himself?