When [Jim] named the bird, he made them sound, Ashley thought, extraordinary. He endowed them with some romantic quality that was really in himself. An odd interest revealed itself, the fire of an individual passion.
Jim and Ashley come from different sides of the status line (the names probably give away who was on which side) and though they should be naturally wary of each other, if not natural enemies, they become the best of friends. This passage reveals a little of that also hints at the meaning of the title of the book. Jim’s passion is birdwatching; not really the watching so much as the spotting and recording the name.
…[Jim] carefully its letters into The Book. Making a place for them there was giving them existence in another form, recognizing their place in the landscape, or his stretch of it: providing sanctuary.
Sanctuary is an important aspect of the story. It exists literally in the land Ashley inherited. It the spot where Jim does his birdwatching and the naming of the Book is part of the agreement made between them to make it a sanctuary. Jim agrees to Ashley’s offer to write the book in exchange for this creating the sanctuary. Later, sanctuary will grow more and more metaphorical in significance.
Jim looked around, astonished. It was Clancy Parkett, whom he had last seen nearly a year ago and whom he believed dead, blown into so many pieces that nothing of him was ever found except what Jim had been covered with.
Dream? Hallucination? Vision? Zombie attack? Clancy Parkett becomes a major character in the story by virtue of what occurs in the trenches during World War I and the consequences it has for Jim afterward. Clancy thus becomes kind of like a guide leading the story out of the mostly realistic realm in which it has been into a more metaphysical and symbolic realm with which moves toward an end.
A life wasn’t for anything. It simply was.
This line coming at the end of the book reflects back to another line earlier: “The baleful look his father turned on the world had no reason. It simply was." The war has been costly in too many ways to know and for reasons just as inexplicable. Imogen Harcourt is a middle-aged photographer who spots Jim in the sanctuary and they become good friends. Reflecting upon the untenable waste of everything in the life before which comes to mean nothing as a result of the inexplicable violence on the battlefield, she arrives at the conclusion stated above as a thought in her head.
