Uncle John's story

The first part of chapter eight is really interesting. As the men are traveling towards Tom’s uncles’ house, Tom tells a story about his uncle. A while back his wife had complained about stomach pain but Uncle John didn’t do anything about it. He wouldn’t take her to a doctor and he didn’t really do much for her personally either. Not to long after that, his wife died. He was so devastated by her death. He most likely felt responsible for her dying, which is a normal and human thing to do. A lot of times in situations like this people do tend to blame themselves. They find one mistake they made that’s related to the event and they claim that they caused it. Tom then tells that since that tragic event, his uncle John has been doing a lot of nice things for people. They are really just random acts of kindness. This is most likely his attempt to make up for the death of his wife. It could be that he owes it to her to be nice to people and take care of others, or maybe it is that he feels he owes simply society as a whole for letting a person die. I could also be a combination of both. It seems that this guilt that John has for the passing of his wife is really keeping him from letting her go. The acts of kindness probably don’t help much in the long run with his coping because he will always have to remember why he is being so nice. The change in his personality will always be there to remind him why he changed his personality in the first place. It is really going to be an endless loop of John feeling guilty about her death. Until he can prove to himself that he could not have done anything to help her, he will be stuck feeling the way he does with all of the guilty and blame he puts on himself for her death.