"I'm okay. Quit shaking me, Darry, I'm okay." He stopped instantly. "I'm sorry." He wasn't really. Darry isn't ever sorry for anything he does. It seems funny to me that he should look just exactly like my father and act exactly the opposite from him. My father was only forty when he died and he looked twenty-five and a lot of people thought Darry and Dad were brothers instead of father and son. But they only looked alike—my father was never rough with anyone without meaning to be. A universal theme found in this excerpt is that big brothers are never sorry. fathers can act like brothers. family relationships are complicated. fathers are never rough with anyone.