200
"My mother's suffering grew into a symbol in my mind, gathering to itself all the poverty,
the ignorance, the helplessness; the painful, baffling, hunger-ridden days and hours; the
restless moving, the futile seeking, the uncertainty, the fear, the dread; the meaningless
pain and the endless suffering. Her life set the emotional tone of my life, colored the men
and women I was to meet in the future, conditioned my relation to events that had not yet
happened, determined my attitude to situations and circumstances I had yet to face. A
somberness of spirit that I was never to lose settled over me during the slow years of my
mother's unrelieved suffering, a somberness that was to make me stand apart and look
upon excessive joy with suspicion, that was to make me self-conscious, that was to make
me keep forever on the move, as though to escape a nameless fate seeking to overtake
me."
What is the effect that Richard's mother's illness had on him?