Back home in Virginia, Milkman begins to understand his father's cold heart towards him, and begins to understand how he loved Milkman in his own way:
"As the son of Macon Dead the first, he paid homage to his own father's life and death by loving what that father had loved: property, good solid property, the bountifulness of life. He loved these things to excess because he loved his father to excess...The he distorted life, bent it, for the sake of gain, was a measure of his loss at his father's death"