Strength

I'm almost done reading Patrimony, but I thought before I finished I would comment on the theme of strength (physical and emotional), as it is a theme that has arisen repeatedly throughout the book. Roth continuously refers to his father as an extremely stubborn, strong, and rather blunt individual. It seems he admires his father's strength and willpower, though at times, he does understand it comes off as cruel to others. One of the hardest things Roth has to come to terms with is the fact that his father may have finally met his match in the form of the tumor. Roth sees an equal strength in both, as he describes the tumor with a similar description of his father, stating, "I was thinking of the fingernail that had been aggrandizing the hollows of his skull for a decade, the material as obdurate and gristly as he was, that had cracked open the bone behind his nose and, with a stubborn, unrelenting force just like his, had pushed tusklike through into the cavities of his face" (164). It is hard for Roth to watch his once strong father battle with the tumor, as he knows this may not be a fight his father will win.