“After his humiliation, he’d hidden in his office and ached amid the fading totems of a youth that no one but his wife found interesting anymore. And Marion didn’t count, because it was Marion who’d impelled him to New York, Marion who’d turned him on to Parker and Thomas and Robeson, Marion who’d thrilled to his stories of the Navajos and urged him to heed his calling to the ministry. Marion was inseparable from an identity that had proved to be humiliating. It had taken Frances Cottrell to redeem it.”

Russ’s reasons for resenting Marion are so obviously unfair and childish that if he ever said them out loud to someone, he would not be able to help but hear how absurd he sounds. The Hildebrandts tend to keep their feelings about each other quiet, however. While sometimes this tendency is a mercy, in other circumstances it leaves irrational blame festering under the surface, growing stronger every day that it is nurtured.

“Writhing with retrospective shame, abasing himself in solitude, was how he found his way back to God’s mercy.”

While Russ and Marion do not realize it, they share the tendency to take comfort in feelings of guilt. Russ feels closest to God when he most needs God’s forgiveness. While there may not be anything inherently wrong with this tendency, the novel shows that Russ often uses it as a way to soothe his conscience when he has knowingly hurt someone. He may have done something wrong, he thinks, but at least now he feels closer to God. 

“If only it were possible to argue with his father without flushing and choking up with tears of anger and hating himself for being smarter, but also less good, than the old man!”

Clem, Becky, and Perry are all disillusioned with Russ for different reasons. Clem considers him a moral hypocrite. Becky considers him an awkward, uncool presence who confides in her things that would better be said to a friend or therapist than a child.