SCHOPENHAUER! The Father of Pessimism

Young pulls from his philosophy and Madge and Homer can be seen as pessimism vs optimism.

Phenomenological tradition https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bodily-awareness/

https://www.open.edu/openlearn/society-politics-law/sociology/the-body-phenomenological-psychological-perspective/content-section-3.1#:~:text=Phenomenologists%20seek%20to%20describe%20people's,T%20but%20performs%20'I

Eugenics https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/educational-resources/timelines/eugenics

Feather(s)/featherweight - used 299 times in the book.

Page 163

“It’s a stone without hands…” Daniel 2:34

“He searcheth out stones in the darkness.” Job 28:3

Laburnum plant symbolism

“He’s rolling in the flood, trying to start her up.”

John Milton, Paradise Lost Book 1

Three Laws of Logic

Young loved murder mysteries so it’s no wonder she included the Locked-room mystery Madge uses to gossip about Josh’s death.

This is something I covered in To All My Darlings (Chapter 7 paragraph 21) - the list of names and people they might represent. I was short on my description of Ham but after reading James Baldwin and Ham as the origin of the “cursed race” or “negros” with regards to white supremacy in the US (and elsewhere), I looked into Ham more and wondered if Young was making some bigger case with all the names and biblical references and I think she is considering that Moses is the name of the prophet Moses in patriarchal religions. All the people that Old Doc (Justice) tried to help. Moses in paragraph 23 then says that after helping all these people what has justice got in return? “Everything is broken.”

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