We are the expression of one life force, but once individuated we no longer know it, so that we recoil in horror from the expression of the same force in other living beings. Blinded to our oneness, we all become assassins, vampires, ghosts. The central symbol of the novel is change, baffling complexity, mystery. Our main dramatic focus, though she's a minor character, is the psychic child Germaine Bellefleur, whom we follow from birth to the age of 4. But in the same time her father passes through 20 or 30 years, and the setting passes through something like a thousand years, with hints of a time-span even greater.
People regularly get taller or shorter depending on. .
The holy mountain in the Adirondacks to which Jedediah goes to find God is at first 10,000 feet but by the end of the novel only 3,000 feet high. An Indian boy, a friend of the family, comes to Jedediah on his mountain and tells him to return to the world. With no belief in God and no interest in the worldly, Jedediah returns to the woman he once loved and becomes the father of those who will figure in this novel, becomes the instrument of the blind life force that, accidentally, indifferently, makes everything beautiful by the simple virtue of its momentary existence. Thanks to Jedediah, God goes on senselessly humming, discovering Himself. To real intellectuals Miss Oates's work tends to be appealing, partly because her vision is huge, well-informed and sound, and partly because they too like suspense, brilliant descriptions and sex.