A father’s single act of defending his son shifted how the son saw him

Evidence

The fact that he had defended me at the parents’ evening contributed to this view of him. Indeed, it was perhaps the most significant factor of them all. — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 178

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the father’s rare moments of taking the narrator’s side, a counterweight to the fear described earlier in the chapter.