Ford uses allusion and hyperbole to express John Dowell's despair after all the emotional upheaval of the novel has passed, and his final questioning of the possibility of true happiness:
Is there any terrestrial paradise where, amidst the whispering of the olive-leaves, people can be with whom they like and have what they like and take their ease in shadows and in coolness? Or are all men’s lives like the lives of us good people—like the lives of the Ashburnhams, of the Dowells, of the Ruffords—broken, tumultuous, agonized, and unromantic lives, periods punctuated by screams, by imbecilities, by deaths, by agonies? Who the devil knows?
The tone of this passage is pretty despairing, as John seems to be totally lacking in any faith that relationships are ever actually happy or internally consistent. The allusion Ford is making here is to the biblical story of the Garden of Eden, the place where the Bible says humanity began. The Garden of Eden was a paradise in which no pain, discomfort, or hardship existed. In the Bible's Book of Genesis, the only people to live in the Garden of Eden were the first man and woman whom God created, Adam and Eve. As there were no other people to distract their attention, adultery was not possible. The phrase "terrestrial paradise" with its "whispering of the olive-leaves," evokes an image of lost innocence and purity and points to John’s jaded view of how relationships in the modern world work. This reference to Eden underscores John’s longing for a simpler, happier existence, free from the complexities and pain of his current life. Even though John himself is far from perfect, he yearns for an impossible ideal where people can truly "take their ease."
The narrator’s use of hyperbole in describing the lives around him as "broken, tumultuous, agonized" and filled with "screams, imbecilities, deaths, agonies" amplifies the novel’s sense of concealed crisis here in its final moments. Things aren’t just bad, they are about as “unromantic” as it is possible to get. The exaggeration in this description underscores the intensity of John’s disillusionment and the depth of his questioning about the point of marriage.
