Adam found his father out. It wasn’t that his father changed but that some new quality came to Adam. He had always hated the discipline, as every normal animal does, but it was just and true and inevitable as measles, not to be denied or cursed, only to be hated. And then–it was very fast, almost a click in the brain–Adam knew that, for him at least, his father’s methods had no reference to anything in the world except his father. The techniques and training were not designed for the boys at all but only to make Cyrus a great man. And the same click in the brain told Adam that his father was not a great man, that he was, indeed, a very strong-willed and concentrated little man wearing a huge busby. Who knows what causes this–a look in the eye, a lie found out, a moment of hesitation?–then god comes crashing down in a child’s brain.

Author: John Steinbeck