As a follow up to last week’s post The Importance of Father-Son Proximity and Initiation into the Masculine Culture I wanted to use a a classic novel to demonstrate the recurrent theme of the absent father causing sons to try to “fly above” the father in United States’ culture. As mentioned last week, the themes to be discussed are ideas from Robert Bly’s book Iron John: A Book About Men suggested to me and discussed with my friend Will Stewart. I will attempt to introduce two new concepts: Shame and ashes. Continue Reading


