Chapters 25-28 Summary and Analysis

Chapter Twenty-five opens with an encounter Arkady and Bruce have with a woman whose husband, they discover, has been having an affair with another woman. Arkady chalks it up as the same pastoral ethic that shows itself the world over. When they leave him, they pass a woman and her young son waiting by a truck on the side of the road. Her husband has gone for parts and has been gone for three days, so they get her a sandwich, and move on to a discussion about how different Australia would be if Russians, or someone more accustomed to open spaces had settled it, instead of English islanders who see no value in the space, and so sell it off. Changing the subject, Arkady asks whether Bruce had ever traveled with a hunting people, and so Bruce tells...