Adam Trask Character Analysis

“You’re trying to take him away! I don’t know how you’re going about it. What do you think you’re doing?”

“The proofs that God does not exist are very strong, but in lots of people they are not as strong as the feeling that He does.”

Then a breeze would move her bright hair, or she would raise her eyes, and Adam would swell out in his stomach with a pressure of ecstasy that was close kin to grief.

It seemed to Samuel that Adam might be pleasuring himself with sadness.

“We are descended from this. This is our father. Some of our guilt is absorbed in our ancestry. What chance did we have? We are the children of our father. It means we aren’t the first.”

“A great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last.”

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man…why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.”

“That’s what I hate, the liars, and they’re all liars…I love to rub their noses in their own nastiness.”

“I send boys out…I sign my name and they go out. And some will die and some will lie helpless without arms and legs. Not one will come back untorn. Son, do you think I could take a profit on that?...I don’t want the money, Cal. And the lettuce—I don’t think I did that for a profit.”

“You’re trying to take him away! I don’t know how you’re going about it. What do you think you’re doing?”

“The proofs that God does not exist are very strong, but in lots of people they are not as strong as the feeling that He does.”

Then a breeze would move her bright hair, or she would raise her eyes, and Adam would swell out in his stomach with a pressure of ecstasy that was close kin to grief.

It seemed to Samuel that Adam might be pleasuring himself with sadness.

“We are descended from this. This is our father. Some of our guilt is absorbed in our ancestry. What chance did we have? We are the children of our father. It means we aren’t the first.”

“A great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last.”

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man…why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.”

“That’s what I hate, the liars, and they’re all liars…I love to rub their noses in their own nastiness.”

“I send boys out…I sign my name and they go out. And some will die and some will lie helpless without arms and legs. Not one will come back untorn. Son, do you think I could take a profit on that?...I don’t want the money, Cal. And the lettuce—I don’t think I did that for a profit.”