Read the following passage and answer the question. 'Tunde's father had worked forty years for the company, rising from messenger boy to deputy manager. On the day of his retirement, they gave him a clock — as if to remind him that his time was now his own, though he had spent the best of it in their service. He placed the clock on the mantelpiece and never wound it again.' The act of Tunde's father never winding the clock again most likely suggests that he