Like mother like son
Leo’s father was rather reserved, his books were the man’s best friends, thus the whole family refrained from visits to neighbors and friends. Unlike the father, Leo’s mother, “though unworldly,” was “always attracted by the things of the world.” She felt that “if circumstances had been different,” she could have easily taken “her place in it.” However, “thanks to” Leo’s father “preferring objects to people,” she had never had a chance. She liked “gossip,” she liked “social occasions,” she liked “to be dressed right for them,” and, what was more, the woman was “sensitive to public opinion in the village.”This imagery evokes a feeling of sadness. Leo’s parents seem to be rather different people who can’t compromise.
Burning
If anyone would ask Leo to describe “the year 1899”, he would have called it “a disastrous year.” “In January” his father died “after a brief illness”, and in the summer Leo had “diphtheria, with complications.” July and August Leo spend “in bed”. Though it was a rather “hot summer”, the boy only remembered “the heat” of his “own fever” and of which the heat in his room “seemed only another aggravating aspect.” That unbearable heat was his “enemy,” the sun was something “to be kept out.” Leo could only focus on his “aching throat” and “the desperate search” of his “fretful limbs” for “a cool place in the bedclothes.” This imagery helps to understand how poorly Leo feels.
Slightly embarrassed
Just like many other children, Leo worried about his reputation in school. He wanted to be a popular and successful pupil, not an outcast; thus he tried to avoid any kind of embarrassment at any cost. Leo was “haunted by the schoolboy fear” that his mother “wouldn’t look right, do right, be right in the eyes of other boys and their parents.” She would be “socially unacceptable” and make her son “a bloomer.” Leo knew that he could bear “humiliation” for himself “more easily” than he could for her. This imagery evokes a feeling of worry.
