Lucky, lucky child, he thought. One soul who would never fail, would never cower before the inexorable naturalistic principle—that the weak are destroyed by the strong.
-- Dr. Johnny Gordon (chapter 2)

Importance: In this moment of existential honesty, Doctor Gordon, his own professional promise destroyed by his alcoholism and now struggling to be content as a backwoods country doctor in a tight, closed culture where he (and his family) will always be outsiders, voices the darkest implications of the novel’s vision. Dr. Gordon, just days away from his suicide, has just delivered a still born and meditates on how fortunate that child was never to have been born because to live is to endure defeat. The novel is within the naturalist tradition in American novels in which humans are perceived with clinical honesty and scientific detachment. It is a grim environment, both physically and morally, that reflects the Darwinian vision of an amoral universe...