The Son

The novel features recurring tensions between those who seek to subjugate the land that they’ve claimed and those who willfully try to escape the brutal ranch life in Texas. The former maintain their control by embodying hard, ruthless behaviors. The latter internalize soft, selfless values that scarcely fit the harsh lifestyle of the Texas frontier.

The novel presents this tension through the relationship between Peter and his father, Eli. Eli has been deeply shaped by the violence that has followed him throughout his entire life. Having been raised by his Comanche enslavers and participated in many battles, Eli is so desensitized to violence that he sees no issue in eliminating the competition through murder and bloodshed. Eli’s participation in the Garcia massacre merely perpetuates his interpretation of the Comanche way of life, which sees conflict between rival nations as the natural way of life. Peter, on the other hand, cannot see past his lifelong friendship with the equally sentimental head of the Garcia family, Pedro.

Peter thinks that he and his father are opposites. He is unaware, however, that his father has worked to suppress his innate softness to survive on the frontier. Halfway through the novel, Eli considers what might happen if chooses not to return to his family during his summer leave. Part of his hesitation comes from having lost too many families in the past, from his birth family to the found family he gained among the Comanche band. It is implied that Eli belongs on the frontier, rather than in the four walls of the home he has promised to build his wife and child. What changes his mind, however, is the sight of his son Everett in his buckskin shirt. Eli sees himself reflected in his son and is briefly motivated to protect the boy. This resonates with Toshaway’s advice that bravery consists in loving others more than one’s own body. Eli might have embodied this advice if he had chosen to give up the frontier, but once Everett and Madeline are killed in his absence, a life of quiet domesticity no longer becomes an option for him.

The tension between Eli’s hard nature and Peter’s soft nature recurs in the tension between Jeannie and her elder brother Jonas. Jonas is the natural heir to the McCullough ranch, even though he possesses neither the skill nor the interest in controlling it after their father Charles dies. Jonas, who more closely resembles Eli’s bookish brother, Martin, leaves Texas to pursue a life in the Eastern United States. Unlike Jonas, Jeannie aspires to live like her great-grandfather, which pushes her to privilege her hard nature. She prioritizes work over her family, believing that the former is the more worthwhile pursuit. When she is older, she realizes the flaw in her thinking as her distance from her children has failed to cultivate a worthy successor among them. She often looks to Jonas, who chose to escape the harshness that Texas would have cultivated in him, as an alternative for her own life and wonders if she might have been more satisfied if she had pursued a similar path. Meyer argues that humankind’s hard ruthless nature often leads to regret, especially when it prizes prosperity over the care of others.