Samuel Paragraph 10/14/10

Samuel Hamilton

When the narrator introduces Samuel, he says, “Samuel should have been rich from his well rig and his threshing machine and his shop, but he had no gift for business. His customers, always pressed for money, promised payment after harvest, and then after Christmas, and then after – until at last they forgot it. Samuel had no gift for reminding them. And so the Hamiltons remained poor” (Steinbeck 10).



Samuel and Liza used Dr. Gunn’s Family Medicine book to find out how to care for their sick children, and the narrator continues his thoughts about Samuel. “[He] had no equal for soothing hysteria and bringing quiet to a frightened child. It was the sweetness of his tongue and the tenderness of his soul” (11).



The narrator admits that he is relying on photographs and
memories that may have dimmed. However, he is consistent in his description of Samuel, for he says, “And just as there was cleanness about his body, so there was cleanness in his thinking. Men coming to his blacksmith shop to talk and listen dropped their cursing for a while, not from any kind of restraint but automatically, as though this were not the place for it” (11).