--trading up, as it were, for a more respectable, classier type of woman. Later in Lycurgus Clyde once again rejects Rita on the assumption that he will be moving in more elevated social circles. When no more invitations arrive from the Griffiths, however, he is attracted to Roberta in his loneliness and because he senses that she, like himself, feels that the place she has been dealt by fate is somewhat beneath her. The third attempted trade up, to Sondra Finchley, proves to be far more than Clyde is capable of achieving. The early instance of this pattern involved his integration into the bellhop crowd and resulted in the semi-accidental death of the little girl. The second time it results in Roberta's death.
The novel also features repetitions that symbolize the manner in which the world moves relentlessly forward in an almost natural progression with the seeming repetition of Clyde's own story. The opening and closing scenes of the novel offer the most powerful suggestion that nothing has truly changed, that Clyde's mother has learned almost as little from his experiences as he did. The language in which the family is described--both at the beginning and end--is distant, objective, and treats the family's movements and behavior almost like that of a migrating herd of animals. By the end, of course, they have migrated all the way to the farther shore of America and there is, symbolically, nowhere left for them to go. Nothing will change for the Griffiths and the cycle will start over again with their grandchild.
2. Clyde is different from the other bellhops in terms of his upbringing and education. The years of his mother's preaching about the moral evils that confront a person at every turn have had an effect on him. But the lessons are so poorly grounded in any true feeling that they are easily uprooted when Clyde comes in contact with the evils of which she warned him. This happens largely because there was litt...