The accusation
This couple says they are simply moving closer to Russ's job, which is quite a commute, but before long an ulterior motive appears. The couple is motivated to escape the agony and confusion of their son's suicide. He went to war out of love for his community, but when he returned, he was treated as a war criminal by those he risked his life to protect. Rattled by severe PTSD and community accusations against his character, that he willingly killed innocent civilians, the distraught veteran commits suicide. The accusation is an ironic overtone through the whole novel.
The pastoral visit
Russ is visited by a preacher that Bev recruits to see if they can work together to help stave off Russ's severe depression. After a short while, they realize that they actually cannot. Russ is not able to work through the emotions because they are not ambient feelings; they are serious and grounded opinions about the state of affairs and about death. He is not depressed; he is in grief, and the pastor's words are meaningless to him. No matter how religious the language is that they choose to discuss their son, the pain of the loss is still the same.
The race motif
Before long, the community reveals that they are racist. Even Russ and Bev talk about race in a way that probably unnerves modern readers—it was 1959, in their defense. But then, as if predicted exactly that defense, the novelist sends the reader future into the present time. There is still racism in that community, so that the time argument does not work. Together this motif points to race as a kind of American hypocrisy; these people shamed a soldier for doing warfare against foreign people while they themselves ostracize and hate their Black neighbors.
The note
The racial considerations of the novel resolve when a contractor reveals a chest with the son's suicide note; the setting jumps a half a century back into the past. Dan is walked in on by his mother as he writes the suicide note. She says things are getting better for the family, and Dan smiles and nods. The note is hidden, so it symbolizes the fact that suicidal depression often makes people hide their true feelings and motives. This can be seen moralistically as a call to treat people kindly in the case that perhaps they are suffering internally in ways that are extreme but private.
Death as a symbol
Death is a symbol in the novel because it occurs in an untimely way that makes the entire community stop and contemplate death. As a symbol it is finite, but in a strange way. Yes, the death is final, but Kenneth is mentioned so much in the novel he might as well be a character. He haunts the novel as a ghost, looming symbolically behind the narrative arc. Symbolically, his character is everyone, because he symbolizes the fate of all mankind; no one knows his truth or point of view, and he dies. Those two things happen to basically every life form on the earth.
