Shades of Gray

“It was fine for Doc Martin to talk. The war hadn’t ruined his life. His father and brother hadn’t been killed by the Yankees. His little sisters hadn’t been killed in one of the epidemics that had spread from the encampments into the city. And his mother hadn’t turned her face to the wall and slowly died of grief.”

These words, at the very beginning of the book, lay out everything that Will has lost due to the war. He is bitter toward his uncle because his uncle refused to fight in the very war that took so much from Will, and now he has to go live with the man. As will later be revealed, these words also indicate Will’s self-centeredness and inability to see the plight of others.

“He’d momentarily forgotten his dread of living in the same house with a traitor—or with a coward, rather, since his uncle hadn’t actually helped the enemy.”

Will is ashamed of his uncle, which is one reason he does not want to go live with his aunt’s family. While he previously considered him a traitor, after talking to Doc Martin, he decides his uncle is a coward because he refused to fight. This belief causes Will a tremendous amount of distress.

“‘Well, around these parts, a man takes pride in doing things for himself’…Will had never thought about taking pride in hard, physical work.”

These words show some of the cultural differences between Uncle Jed’s family and Will’s family. Will feels morally superior because his father fought in the war and because, while his family enslaved people, they treated these people better than those on big plantations did. Here, Will is being exposed to a different value: one of doing hard work for oneself and taking pride in the job.