Following on from Sairah’s post about familial love, I think it’s interesting to note that, early on in the novel, Jacques tries to find a father figure amongst his teachers, of whom he says “il fallait choisir entre ceux qu’on aimait et ceux qu’on n’aimait pas”. At first the narrator says that teachers become “plus près d’un père”, but he quickly amends this, stating that love for a teacher is not required in the same way that a father’s love arguably is. Instead of finding a substitute for his absent father at school, he instead discovers that they are “comme ces oncles entre lesquels on a le droit de choisir”. It is phrased positively (one has the right to chose) yet it is still not the same thing as having one’s own father. Certainly, Jacques' uncles do not seem to have a particularly strong influence over him in the parts of the novel that exist.
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