What does Youth represent?

The novel starts when Jozef is an infant, and is largely a telling of his idyllic youth on the mountainside with his father. Only when he moves on to war and maturity is his life shattered by reality. When Aishe's baby is born in the end, Jozef is desperate to save him, even raise him as his own, so that he can somehow recapture his own useful innocence. In the end of the novel, Jozef is healthy and provided for and on his way to a new life, but he has left something precious behind.