“Yet when I picture his face through that back window now, I remember something else as well. He was searching. He was looking for something in my face. He looked for it very carefully and very hard… Whatever he’d been searching for, he hadn’t found it, and this, too, seemed to satisfy him in some way.”
It drives me mad every time I read it. What was he looking for? Love? Disappointment? Relief? Hatred?
by AnnualCellist7127
2 Comments
Very good question, not figured it out but I do wonder if he sought acceptance, acceptance of him as a person.
Devastating book that was so well written.
I interpreted it as him searching for a sign of recognition/understanding, like he wanted to see that she “gets” him and why he is what he is, why he’s done the things he’s done. Maybe because he’s desperate for a connection to another human being; maybe because he blames her and wants her to recognize herself in him. And the way she phrases that scene, it sounds like they remain as opaque to each other as they have been since he was born.
Just one way of looking at it, but it’s how the ending struck me when first reading it!