Word: tarbox
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...rents in the fabric of national life do not lead to a resurgence of the Christian religion. They are in fact the signs of God's withdrawal from our republic. In the end, as a last judgment of God, or of the author, The Tarbox Congregational Church is struck by lightning. Only the gold weathercock on the spire, the symbol of God's watchful but now indifferent eye, is spared in the ensuing fire. Eventually even this emblem is hauled down from its pinnacle. Placed in the hands of the Church's absurd minister it is found to measure only...
...resurgent religion is not Christianity then, but a perverse humanism. The affluent young couples of Tarbox, Mass. find the comforts that religion used to provide--the alleviation of one's fear of death, the sense of community, the transfiguration of the world--not in the Church, but in their relations with each other...
...Love in Tarbox is not a free and unmerited human grace, but a mask of fear. Love-making is for Piet a way of momentarily escaping his haunting fear of death, a way of forgetting the reality of loss, the eventual extinction of consciousness...
...love affair is allowed momentarily to flourish in the marshes of Tarbox, and its individuality is contrasted to the interchangeable lust of the others. This is Piet's love for Foxy Whitman, a lady for whom the author too seems to have had some love, for he has made her a luminous and appealing character. But this affair glows only briefly. And though Piet and Foxy do marry, they do so long after their love has died...
...left with the impression that most human feelings are absent in Tarbox. Though Piet has a momentary infusion of paternal love, it seems like no more than a nod to that feeling on the part of the author, a reflex in his own character. Piet eventually leaves his two young children without any deeply anguishing regrets. Children in Tarbox are mainly encumbrances to their parents. They are bundled up and transported, even when sick and feverish, so that the couples may continue their adulterous visits. It is the children who finally give an air of pathos to the network...