Pagnol also refuses sentimentality. His mother is loving but prone to nervous spells; his father is heroic but ridiculous; his uncle Jules is a scoundrel with a heart of gold. The Provençal peasants are not noble savages but shrewd, sometimes cruel realists. This honesty prevents the books from becoming mere nostalgia. They are, instead, a portrait of a specific time (turn-of-the-century Provence) and a universal truth: that to remember childhood is to mourn it.
The "glory" of the title refers to Marcel’s father, Joseph Pagnol. Joseph is a dedicated, somewhat anxious primary school teacher who believes in reason, science, and the virtue of hard work. In the countryside, he becomes a different man: he hunts, he hikes, and he dreams of becoming a "true Provençal." The book’s central comedic and poignant arc follows a disastrous hunting trip where Joseph, the cultured intellectual, fails embarrassingly in the practical world of the bush. He shoots at a partridge and hits a tree; he loses his dog. Pagnol also refuses sentimentality
