Well, I guess I'll get it started. Here's my take on question 1:
I don’t see any of Grandpap in Eric. Eric is, from the moment we are introduced to him, his own man. A man in flux: tentative and disillusioned with his station in life, granted----but clearly emergent as a sentient and tender-hearted man.
Compare/contrast the two men? Sure, why not? Eric’s heart is open to life and sensitive. Grandpap’s heart is jaded and hardened from a lifetime of toeing a hard line of mountain masculinity, secret-keeping and conformity.
I get the sense that it’s all over but the burying for Grandpap, but Eric is showing a reverence for life that will burst into full bloom later in the book, when a far more personal crucible must be navigated in his own life.
Josh is non-descript in my perception: a mere mirror of his father. He seems so one-dimensional that his only purpose is for incidental dramatic effect.
You nailed it. While Junior's son Josh is a chip off the old block, Eric is like New Blood - an enlightened one - like WHERE does this come from? In a community where DNA or indoctrination keep perpetuating barbarism, animal cruelty, the mentality that we should put up and shut up rather than challenge evil or stand up for the vulnerable, and turn a blind eye... somehow, Eric emerges from his horrible childhood with a conscience, a sense of compassion. I don't doubt this. I just keep wondering how the Erics of the world somehow rise above their origins and become better than what tradition would have them be.
Even when his peers mock him, he doesn't bend. He just doesn't reveal his true feelings.
Ok, here's my take on Taylor Beckett.
In paragraph 3 of Chapter Two, the first thing we are told about Taylor is that she is ethical. It remains for the reader to discover just how much that schemata directs her throughout the novel, however; I’m not spilling the beans (no spoiler here!)
Paragraph 5 gives us our first foreshadow of the novel: we catch the allusion that in her past, she’s been in the news. And we can safely infer it was not something she enjoyed nor endured willingly.
The rest of the chapter sketches a news-professional who’s no novice but is perhaps in a quasi-catatonic career-rut. She has a potty-mouth and an impetuous personality---but she has a colleague who can roll with her punches, and who just revealed himself as an advocate and a mentor. . . and maybe more later.
Well said! Love it!
-- we catch the allusion that in her past, she’s been in the news...not something she enjoyed nor endured willingly.
I especially love this (Charles! Charles!):
-- she has a colleague who can roll with her punches, and who just revealed himself as an advocate and a mentor. . . and maybe more....
What's so sad is that while this is true to a word in a literary sense, it's also true in a real sense. His character is based on real people I've encountered, people who seem just as one-dimensional in real life because they only present one side of themselves for the world, and it's seldom a flattering one. Does anyone else know people like that?
I certainly do, and wouldn't it be nice if they only existed for incidental dramatic effect in real life? Some people are purely a product of their environment...no independent thinking, no desire to veer off the course set by genetics or the bubble they grew up in. No desire for change. No need to better themselves. They don't see an issue with how they think (or don't), or what their circumstance is, whether it's good or bad. They're content to be whatever generations past dictate they are. I feel this is exactly who and what Josh represents.
Yes! You nailed it.