No absolutes: change, integrity and living

Lawrence rejects absolutes: fixed, unchanging truths. Grass withers, but grows greener after rain; a fixed 'Word' that never changes only grows stale.

Everything flows and changes. His own feelings differ from day to day, and he can love only someone who changes and startles him.

Through all this change, he keeps a certain integrity: he is still himself. But if he fixes an idea of himself and sticks to it, he becomes a lamp-post: rigid, dead.

In a novel, characters who are good or bad by pattern go dead on the page. We too must live, not cut life to a pattern.

So the novel helps us develop a feeling for what is alive: to see when a person goes dead inside, rather than judging by a fixed theory of good and bad. Live, change, and stay whole.