Whale Talk

Chapter Ten opens with T.J. and John Paul working on motorcycles and discussing the day T.J. discovered his father crying in the dark.John Paul apologizes to T.J. for that day. T.J. asks his father how he thinks about the day he accidentally killed the widow’s boy, and John Paul responds by telling him that in the beginning he berated himself, but he later thought about suicide. 

These days he is gentler with himself, having learned that “the universe doesn’t make allowances for mental lapses or ignorance, but that maybe [he is] a better man because [he] knows that” (176). Before the accident, John Paul was quick to insult people who made mistakes like the one he made on the day of the accident. Now he is “a lot slower to draw the line between good and bad,” even for people like Rich Marshall, who he imagines is the way he is because of mistreatment by his father (177).T.J. says he cannot bring himself to feel sympathy for Rich or even see people like him as victims. John Paul is unsurprised by T.J.’s perspective. His own life has been shaped by the accident in that he does everything to atone for his actions every chance he gets, such as taking in Heidi.