![]() After months in the hospital, which nearly bankrupt his family, Jake lives, but carries a permanent limp.Īlthough the fall is entirely Jake’s fault, Arthur suffers immense guilt because he did not believe that Jake was really falling and not only ignored his cries for help, but when Jake finally said, “I’m going to fall” (83), Arthur says “Good” (83), which haunts him for the remainder of the novel.Īfter the fall, Arthur and Jake’s relationship is different, and the two are more consciously enemies. Eventually, Jake’s recklessness catches up with him: he falls off a bridge and is crippled. Arthur also scrapes the burn wood off fence posts that young Jake enjoys setting on fire. He never tells his parents about the knife, instead driving a pitchfork through his boot to make it seem like an accident. Jake’s recklessness has Arthur covering for his brother from the beginning. A knife hits Arthur’s foot, which sets the stage for many other of Jake’s impulsive, risk-taking adventures to land on Arthur. Jake is prone to taking risks, something established in the Prologue, when Jake pesters Arthur into playing a game Jake has invented, called “Knives.” The game consists of standing opposite each other some distance and throwing a large hunting knife as close to the other’s bare foot as possible without hitting it. Arthur, for his part, is well aware that Jake is their mother’s favorite, but feels powerless to change that. While their mother spoils Jake compared the Arthur, Jake longs for their father Henry’s approval, something he never gets, in part because while he longs for it, he is unable to do the work or make the effort it would take to get Henry’s approval. While this split exists, each brother also longs for the affection and approval of the parent that they feel like they do not have. This dichotomy remains throughout the novel, with Arthur in the more masculine role while Jake is continually the more feminine character. ![]() Jake, who was born after two miscarriages, is their mother’s favorite. Arthur is quiet, strong, and dutiful, happiest with his father, working the family farm, while Jake is good-looking, clever, book-smart and lazy.Īrthur is the first-born child and the favorite of his father. The story of the Dunn family centers around the two brothers, Arthur and Jake. Lawson’s choice of structure means the action of the novel sometimes occurs out of sequence, and the novel sometimes does not fill in all the gaps between the two stories, leaving some details for the reader to guess at on their own. Arthur is a child and young man in the chapters told from his point-of-view, and a grown man with a wife and children in the chapters told from Ian’s point-of-view. Ian’s story is set in the late 1950s, a generation later than Arthur’s, which begins toward the end of the Great Depression, in the late 1930s. The older of the two Dunn brothers, Arthur is repeatedly portrayed as a large, lumbering, slow-thinking man happiest plowing the fields of his farm near the fictional town of Struan, in Northern Canada. Even-numbered chapters follow Arthur Dunn. Odd-numbered chapters are told from the point-of-view of Ian Christopherson, the son of a doctor who takes a job on Arthur Dunn’s farm, chiefly to be near Laura Dunn.
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