in a style a bit metaphorical like plato , and with an effusive and even a baroque display of words and clauses that is somewhat unrestrained and cognate to thomas wolfes palpable language in look homeward , angel 146 ( a recurrent word in his work ) albeit with a lot more syntactical complexity , this novel in style and substance encapsulates doubts about the existence of morality while affirming the existence of trace values of sentience and compassion which are of course not unique to humans but witnessed in all mammals if not the whole animal kingdom , giving us no right to consider ourselves the only moral creatures on the planet , and perhaps , given how we behave toward each other , toward other species , and the ecosystem , no right to consider ourselves moral at all .