Quote 1
Mother: Everybody was in such a hurry to bury him. I said not to plant it yet. [To Keller] I told you to…! (1.272)
Kate blames Joe for accepting Larry's death too soon – and perhaps for the romance unfolding between Chris and Ann that she's anxious to prevent.
Quote 2
Mother: You above all have got to believe, you…
Keller: [rises] Why me above all?
Mother: …Just don't stop believing…
Keller: What does that mean, me above all? (1.309-312)
Kate doesn't say much, but she says it clearly enough for Joe to understand. He above all has to believe that Larry is still alive, because if Larry is dead, then Joe killed him.
Quote 3
Mother: Don't, dear. Don't take it on yourself. Forget now. Live. (3.182)
We don't know, guys. What do you think? Should Chris just forget? Isn't that what Joe and Kate have been trying to do all along?
Quote 4
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 5
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 6
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 7
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 8
Mother: Why must you make believe you hate us? Is that another principle? – that you have to hate us? You don't hate us, George, I know you, you can't fool me, I diapered you. (2.381)
Kate is very sly, very manipulative. With her magnetic maternal power, she almost successfully coaxes George into forgetting about the whole thing.
Quote 9
Mother: He hasn't been laid up in fifteen years…
Keller: Except my flu during the war.
Mother: Huhh?
Keller: My flu, when I was sick during… the war. (2.448-451)
Whoops. George smells Kate's misstep right away. The Kellers' enthusiastic attempts at healing this rift crash and burn.
Quote 10
Mother: While you were getting mad about Fascism Frank was getting into her bed.
George: He won the war, Frank. (2.372-3)
Like Chris, George comes back disillusioned from the war. Faced with the banal reality of late '40s America, they can't understand what they were fighting for in the first place.
Quote 11
Mother: Everything that happened seems to be coming back. I was just down the cellar, and what do I stumble over? His baseball glove. I haven't seen it in a century. (1.254)
Kate subtly but very powerfully inserts reminders of Larry into the conversation, making it more difficult for Joe and Chris to be honest with her about their own belief that he's dead. She wants to maintain a certain reality.
Quote 12
Mother: [emotionally] You think of him! You see? [Triumphantly] She thinks of him!… he's in your thoughts.
Ann: That's a funny thing to say; how could I help remembering him? (1.358-361)
For Kate, Ann's reference to Larry is a vindication of her own faith that he's still alive. For Ann – who, even at this point, knows for a fact Larry is dead – it's just part of a memory.
Quote 13
Mother: The night he gets into you bed, his heart will dry up. Because he knows and you know. To his dying day he'll wait for his brother! (3.91)
Kate would prefer that the memory of the past live on, even if it destroys every potentiality in the future. She can't understand her life without the hope that Larry is out there somewhere.
Quote 14
Mother: Your brother's alive, darling, because if he's dead, your father killed him. Do you understand me now? (2.519)
We're really interested in Kate's own complicity with Joe's decision to let those cracked cylinders ship. He seems to rely on her guidance quite a bit. Do you think she knew about it at the time? Gave him advice?
Quote 15
Mother: All right, Joe. Just…be smart. [Keller, in hopeless fury, looks at her, turns around, goes up to porch and into house, slamming screen door violently behind him. Mother sits in chair downstage, stiffly, staring, seeing.] (1.623)
In this last line of Act 1, the stage directions give us an idea of how the Kellers handle extreme challenges. Joe throws a tantrum and goes in the house; Kate sits outside processing and preparing. She's the more intelligent and stronger of the two, as we come to see. Does that make her more or less guilty than Joe?
Quote 16
Mother: You can't bull yourself through this one, Joe, you better be smart now. This thing – this thing is not over yet. (3.36)
Joe may see his bull-headedness as courage. But Kate understands the difference between stubbornness – Joe's go-to mode – and strategy. Strategy is what's needed now.