Blame

When Roberts sister falls out of her wheel chair onto the hard ground and dies. He blames himself because she was his whole life. His mother Mrs. Ross has issues with closeness to people that she truly loves. Later on it is revealed in the novel that her brother died in a completely random trolley accident and ever since then she realized how hopeless it was to keep people alive. This way of being "distant" from the ones she loves is displayed early on in the novel when she joins Robert in the bathroom during his bath. She tells him that "people in the world are all born alone and at the hands of strangers" and tells him that she could do nothing to keep him alive from the moment he was cut away from her. This statement makes it seem as though she doesn't care about Robert going off to the army because she can't keep him alive anyways. Later on when Robert is labelled as "missing in action" by the army, Mrs. Ross goes blind almost as though without her son in the world there is nothing left to see.