How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Act.Line). Every time a character talks counts as one line, even if what they say turns into a long monologue.
Quote #1
Mother: Stop that, Bert. Go home. [Bert backs up, as she advances.] There's no jail here. (1.318)
Kate doesn't want Joe to play the jail game with the neighbor kids because it reminds everyone that Joe's partner is in jail – and that he put him there.
Quote #2
Mother: That's why there's God. Otherwise anything could happen. But there's God, so certain things can never happen. (1.410)
It may be a mushy personal theology, but Kate needs it. If she accepts that Larry was killed, she has to also accept the evil of her husband's crime and her own complicity with it.
Quote #3
Ann: He knowingly shipped out part that would crash an airplane. And how do you know Larry wasn't one of them?
Mother: I was waiting for that. [Going to her] As long as you're here, Annie, I want to ask you never to say that again. (1.464)
Ann doesn't know it, but she's damning the people she's talking to. No wonder Joe is so forgiving and compassionate in his judgment of her father. He's guilty himself.
Quote #4
Mother: I don't know. [She speaks with warning.] He's a lawyer now, Joe. George is a lawyer. (1.610)
Kate fears that the retribution she has been expecting may be coming now, in the form of vengeful George. He's more dangerous now that he's a lawyer. Joe and Kate have got to be on their game when this guy arrives.
Quote #5
Chris: George, you don't want to be the voice of God, do you? (2.238)
Like his father, Chris wants George to "see it human." Chris is a compromising moral relativist long before he realizes it at the end of the play.
Quote #6
George: The court didn't know your father! But you know him. You know in your heart Joe did it. (2.256)
George doesn't believe the court carried out justice. So he's trying to carry out a little bit here by taking Ann away from Chris.
Quote #7
George: He's like that now. He'd like to take every man who made money in the war and put him up against a wall. (2.417)
Steve has gotten a lot more "eye for an eye" since he was imprisoned.
Quote #8
Mother: As long as you live, that boy is alive. God does not let a son be killed by his father. Now you see, don't you? Now you see. (2.519)
Kate needs God (and horoscopes) to understand how her and her husband's actions make sense in the world.
Quote #9
Keller: How can I pay?
Mother: Tell him… you're willing to go to prison. (3.56)
Kate doesn't really suggest this because she believes Keller deserves it. Offering to go to prison is more like a gesture to Chris. She wants to hold on to at least one son.
Quote #10
Chris: I could jail him! I could jail him, if I were human any more. But I'm like everybody else now. I'm practical now. You made me practical. (3.124)
Again, Chris places the blame on his parents, who "made" him practical. He needs an out just as much as his father does.
Quote #11
Chris: Then what was Larry to you? A stone that fell into the water? It's not enough for him to be sorry. Larry didn't kill himself to make you and Dad sorry. (3.175)
We wonder why Chris wants his father to be punished so much. For the ideal of justice? To keep Ann? To cancel out his own complicity?