“You must escape, or you will die…you must find the place…you must hunt for yourself…you must find me” (Wolfe 482). Eugene Gant…a young man filled with high hopes and much desire. Certain forces throughout Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel begin to push Eugene out into the world where he can truly find himself. These same forces make Eugene realize his own abilities, needs, and wants. As the novel progresses, Eugene becomes surrounded by symbols for him to seize the day and release all his pain and emotion. In his novel, Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe tries to show how family, small-town life, and the worlds of high school and college affect the passions of a young man.
             Wolfe demonstrates how family life adds coal to the burning passions within Eugene. Throughout the novel, he describes how Eugene’s tumultuous, neglectful, and disturbing home and family life work on the emotions of Eugene. For example, the lack of attention placed onto Eugene starts at a very young age. Not only is Eugene part of a large family, but his father, Oliver, “slept when the great pangs of birth began in Eliza at two o’clock and slept through all the patient pain and care of doctor, nurse, and wife” (Wolfe 27). Eugene, just from his mother’s womb, can sense the feelings of disregard that his drunken father has not only for Eugene but also for Eliza. This neglect probably fills Eugene’s heart and becomes “a grappling with life, a remembrance of things past tinged by the shadow of regret, of one who has found his youthful experiences full of confusion” (Chamberlain 4027). These same feelings of neglect turn into abuse as alcohol and Oliver’s temper cause him to hit his own son Eugene. As expected, Eugene receives less understanding from his father as the novel proceeds and when it is time for college, Oliver “spoke his final word and thus i...