“From the very beginning, we didn’t fit. Rebecca held you easily and naturally, as though she’d been born to you rather than the other way around. Whereas I always felt awkward, scared of this fragile weight in my arms, unable to tell what you wanted when you cried. I didn’t understand you at all. That never changed.”

Tom’s letter to Jake identifies the central tension between him and his son. His inability to connect with Jake throughout the novel is rooted in the fear that he’ll do something wrong rather than a lack of love, and overcoming that difficulty drives his character arc.

“Age had brought with it an understanding that his father had been a small man, disappointed with everything in his life, and that his son had just been a convenient target to vent his many frustrations on. But that understanding had come too late. By then the message had been absorbed and become part of his programming. Objectively, he knew it wasn’t true that he was worthless and a failure. But it always felt true. The trick, explained, still convinced.”

Pete’s explanation of his childhood provides context for the decision he makes to leave his son, Tom, when his alcoholism became a problem; Pete’s father did so much emotional damage to him that he’s afraid he’ll do the same to young Tom. This lack of self-worth influences Pete’s decision to remain isolated and confront his alcoholism through a private ritual.

“Glass smashing.

My mother screaming.

A man shouting.”

Dreams are a recurring motif throughout the story, and it often depicts them in this exact style: three repeated images punctuating a dream’s referential, imagistic reality. This one is Tom’s, and it illustrates the immediacy of the emotional memory of Pete leaving Tom’s mother, which had a profound effect on Tom.