Part I provides the necessary back story on the characters who shape Oliver's childhood and helps us understand the significance of Oliver's conflict: the conflict between Oliver's sense of duty and his “true nature”. The section begins with Nathaniel Alden, Oliver's reclusive Puritan uncle, and we are clued into his life and his philosophy. It is easy to dismiss Nathaniel as a prig, but his philosophy is practical enough and his life is in such unwavering unison with his beliefs, (a unison hard to find in many of the characters) that he serves as a good example of an early American Puritan unaffected, or just escaping, the oncoming genteel tradition. The detailed caricature of Nathaniel is significant because it shows how he affects Peter's life, which in turn, affects Oliver's. Nathaniel's problem is that his beliefs are so strong that he doesn't validate any world view except his own.