“Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood.”
This simile occurs at an appropriate moment in Philip’s life. As a medical student, he is particularly attentive to seeing life philosophically through the lens of anatomy. The implication is that love as a parasite cannot live without access to the heart, so it is not to be considered in terms of something that can exist outside the body. The negative parasitic aspect of love is simply to be considered a by-product of the positive aspects; in fact, it is to be considered something that feeds off the positive aspects. So, the simile reveals Philip as someone who sees love in realistic terms rather than idealistic ones.
Hayward
Having established that Philip has adopted or else has been emotionally conditioned to develop a propensity for approaching life with a realistic perspective rather than being an idealist, it behooves the attentive reader to track the path which leads to this outlook. Essential to the development of Philip’s philosophy are two mentors who share some aspects, but are situated as opposition forced wielding influence in others. Hayward is one of these mentors and becomes a metaphorical representative of idealism. Idealism is a philosophical view which can be quite attractive because of the way it eschews the dark angels of one’s nature, but within it lurks the danger of great disappointment. It is far easier to be disappointed by the hypocrisy of an idealist than a realist.
Cronshaw
Like Hayward, Cronshaw is a poet-philosopher, but as a metaphor for adopting a realistic philosophical point of view, he is the perfect representative of the danger to the idealist. Philip has retained many of his ideals by the time he meets Cronshaw and gradually those ideals begin to get stripped away as he is exposed to the Cronshaw’s deterministic view that while denying the existence of free will still chooses to act according to its existence as illusion. But negation of free will while adhering to its illusory existence only guarantees disappointment and so what Cronshaw describes as a deterministic outlook toward life result in an acceptance of fate that is much closer to nihilism than enlightened realism.
“the whole world was like a sick-house, and there was no rhyme or reason in it”
After a lifetime of searching for meaning and happiness, after Philip has finally married and settled into domesticity, he is musing about the life he has lived and the lessons learned. His mind turns to his clubfoot as he finally arrives at a point in his life when he can view his deformity with objectivity and appreciate the positive impact that this defect has had upon him. Which leads to a broader perspective out his narcissistic view of the world and the apprehension that he is not and never has been alone with dealing with such a defect upon the soul.
“He put off the faith of his childhood quite simply, like a cloak that he no longer needed”
The adoption of a philosophy to give meaning to live is a direct response to growing up in an environment in which belief in God was not something he came to of his own volition. The first time that Philip is seriously exposed to the potentiality that other paths exists and that there are other roads that can be taken becomes a moment of introspection and decision in which he finds not only that the faith he has expressed can be put aside, it can be shrugged off as easily as a piece of clothing. His belief has not been something inside him—something intimately connected to his character—but merely adornment and decoration.
