Essay Questions

What is Bull Meacham's view of parenting? Is this effective?

Ideally, effective parenting blends reciprocal respect and love. Meacham's style of parenting was not really about either of those things; respect was an order, not something that he inspired, and love was never felt by his family who were actually frightened of him and his autocratic nature. Meacham ran his family as if it was another branch of the military. He barked orders at anyone beneath him in rank and anyone who was not military personnel and this extended to his children.

The children dread his homecoming, Ben in particular, who finds the rod of iron that his father rules with incredibly hard to bear. He believes his father is impossible to please and cannot wait until he graduates from high school so that he can leave. He also finds his father very unfeeling and his more sadistic side becomes evident when the family are driving at night, and to keep himself awake he drives over turtles in the road, killing them. He values the lives of military personnel but seems oblivious to the value of anyone or anything else. He does love his children, and occasionally demonstrates this, but his overall style is that of an officer in charge of his troops, and his kids feel that he is a bully before he is a father.

What kind of woman is Lilian Meacham?

Lillian is a Southern Belle who is wholly complicit in her husband's bullying of their children. She adores Bull but her personality changes when he is at home, and even as beforehand; as they wait for his arrival she becomes somehow tougher and less sympathetic to her children. She has learned to bark out orders in a similar way and this is how she runs the household in terms of chores and errands that need to be done. Despite in general being passive and silent in the face of his bullying, she is also the only person who can correct Bull about anything or comment on his behavior; for example, when she tells him to eat with a fork and not with his fingers, he says nothing, and does as he is told. It is entirely likely that if she asked him to be less militaristic with the children's upbringing he would take notice and soften his parenting style, but she says nothing which implies that she does not have a problem with it and does not mind raising children who are scared of their father.

Why is Ben's relationship with Bull so complicated?

There are several factors that make the relationship between father and oldest son complicated and the first has less to do with Ben and Bull and more to do with the fact they are father and oldest son - there is the "deer hitting antlers" air about them where the father begins to feel threatened by his eldest son growing up and out of his control. Another factor that makes their relationship complicated is that they are very different in terms of character. Ben is gentle, kind and non-judgmental. He goes out of his way to befriend those whom others do not and has no prejudice about him; he reaches out to the ethnic students at school whom the other children ignore or marginalize. The same cannot be said of Bull who has very fixed ideas about who his son should be friends with and whom he should not.

Another reason for their complex relationship is that Ben essentially feels his father to be a bully and resents that he is expected to order his younger siblings around in the same way. He is given more responsibility than his brother and sister simply because of his age and he feels that this is extremely unfair. He is very resentful of what he is ordered to do within the family and this impedes any positive relationship with his father. However, as he ages, and after his father's death, he realizes that he did not ever really hate him at all, but his parenting style, and realizes also that he really wanted to have his father's love; he believes by the end of the novel that he actually loved his father very much.