Shade and Family
The structure is notoriously difficult to unravel, but most readers agree that Shade is a poet married to his teenage sweetheart, Sybil. Their only child, a daughter named Hazel, apparently committed suicide some time before the novel's action begins. Shade lives in the college town of New Wye, amidst the Appalachian Mountains. His fame is sufficient for television pundits to often mention him in the same breath (just "one oozy footprint behind") as his fellow poet Robert Frost, an association which Shade does not entirely enjoy, perhaps because Frost is always mentioned first.
Read more about this topic: John Shade
Famous quotes containing the words shade and/or family:
“When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of Godlike lambs we joy,
I’ll shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our father’s knee;
And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“Though a family be a thousand, there can be only one in charge.”
—Chinese proverb.