Through the three [long, personal digressions in Brother to Dragons], Warren gives us the spiritual history of RPW, a spiritual history which parallels in many respects the spiritual history of Jefferson, the central concern of the poem, and which justifies the superior wisdom of RPW the commentator. (p. 19)

His cousin's butchering of [a slave was] a traumatic experience for Jefferson. Prior to this event, Jefferson saw man as standing between beast and God and aspiring to the divine. Evil was merely the blot of centuries of oppression, which could be erased within the context of the American Eden. In this context, man's basic nobility, goodness and innocence would assert themselves and man would fulfill his God-like potential. The slaying of George is such a traumatic experience for Jefferson that he reverses his philosophic position and denies that man is capable of any good. This is the Jefferson we encounter at the opening of the poem. (p. 20)

The three digressions in Brother to Dragons … can be seen to mark the three stages of spiritual growth of the persona RPW. In the first digression [like Jefferson], he is disillusioned, bitter and alienated. In his ascent of Rocky Hill, the second digression, RPW receives the truths necessary for spiritual growth from the images of his father, the mountain and the snake. The third digression marks the assimilation of these truths, which assimilation permits RPW to be reconciled to his father and to enter "the world of action and liability." The events within the digressions are all experientially prior to the "Any Time" reality of the central action of the poem and thus vindicate the mature spiritual wisdom which RPW displays in confronting Jefferson.

RPW's spiritual progress parallels the spiritual progress of Jefferson. (p. 29)

[The] digressions serve two other functions. First, the RPW episode functions as the traditional Warren device of the story within the story…. [The] RPW episode in Brother to Dragons provides a miniature working out of the ethical ideal of the main narrative action. Here the episode works more as a frame than a contained exemplum. After Jefferson has been introduced, RPW gives us his first digression. The second digression follows almost immediately while the third digression takes the final seventeen pages of the poem. Given the second digression, the third follows logically and organically. In the vast gap between the second and third digressions, Jefferson's confrontation and assimilation of spiritual reality takes place. Thus, the main action of the poem, Jefferson's conversion, is framed by RPW's conversion. This frame works in a second way. Warren says in his Introduction that the main issue with which Brother to Dragons is concerned is a "human constant." By having Jefferson's spiritual progress also acted out by RPW, the issue of the poem ceases to be simply an issue of the Nineteenth Century. By enclosing the past within the frame of the present, Warren is able to transcend mere past and present and to create his poetic "Any Time." (pp. 29-30)