Increased Pressure

Eustace is very upset. The increased pressure is effecting Eustace negatively. Much like before, he is always busy. He is overworking and most of the time he is traveling or building Turtle Island more. During this time, he is never one with nature. Eustace is the businessman. He seemed to lose the joy he gained by teaching and doing the things that normally made him feel good. He could not get a good connection with women either. Because Eustace is always busy, Valerie began to drift away from him. In Chapter 6 Valerie says, “He was and is a loving but intolerant person. Someone else’s opinon was never welcome. He was obsessed with making money, with buying land, with success, and he was always on the road. It got to the point where I never saw him. The only time we spoke was when he gave me orders.” (Gilbert 138) She had an affair with Henry and they broke up when Eustace figured out the betrayal after being lied to. He went through woman to woman, finding that he could never hold down a relationship. He called a psychologist to come to Turtle Island one day. “He told her that he feared that there was something wrong with him emotionally, that he couldn’t make his relationships with other people work. The folks he labored with at Turtle Island were always angry at him or misunderstanding him, and he wasn’t as close to his brothers as he would like to be, and he was always driving woman away or not getting close enough to trust people.” (Gilbert 144) The psychologist even told him that there was nothing wrong with him because she believed that all he needed was nature, because that was the image built around Eustace Conway. Eustace had even gone so far as to write to his father about how upset and depressed he was, and the pain he felt everyday.