He has been reborn, and he doesn't want to have anything to do with who he was. He is succeeding beyond his wildest dream, and he doesn't want to do anything that might undermine his good fortune. We have all seen people who seem to change overnight when they strike it rich. They have no time for their former friends or their family. They avoid anything that might remind them of who they were and where they came from.
Traumatic events can also produce such a reaction.
I just finished reading After Long Silence , a memoir by Helen Fremont about the author's quest to discover her Jewish past, which had been concealed by her parents and her aunt. Holocaust survivors, they were living their lives as Catholics and claimed that their parents had died in an allied bombing. As the truth about their Jewish background is discovered, the parents refuse to talk about it, and only reluctantly begin to acknowledge their family's history. They have had very hard lives. We have all suffered a great deal.