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
Frank: Larry was born in August. He'd been twenty-seven this month. And his tree blows down. (1.30)
Frank is making a retroactive horoscope for Larry, which is why he remembers the missing soldier's birthday.
Quote #2
Keller: She's dreaming about him again. She's walking around at night. (1.162)
Keller is frustrated by his wife's stubborn refusal to accept the death of their son Larry.
Quote #3
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 #4
Chris: I've been thinking, y'know? – maybe we ought to put our minds to forgetting him? (1.273)
While Chris may be the most idealistic character in the play, his gentle request to let go of the past doesn't stem from concern for his mother. He's preparing the stage to marry Ann.
Quote #5
Ann: I guess I never grew up. It almost seems that Mom and Pop are in there now… Gosh, those dear dead days beyond recall. (1.348)
Ann has a placid relationship with the past – perhaps facilitated by the cut-and-dried decision she made to break with her father. Her happy memories contrast with the fraught way Kate, Joe, and Chris think about Larry.
Quote #6
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 #7
Ann: Haven't they stopped talking about Dad?
Chris: Nobody talks about him any more.
Keller: Gone and forgotten, kid. (1.430-432)
Just as they team up to protect Kate from the reality of Larry's death, Joe and Chris keep the truth from Ann. In fact, the neighbors talk about it all the time.
Quote #8
[On the Rise: Chris is discovered at Right, sawing the broken-off tree, leaving stump standing alone.] (2.1)
In this stage direction that opens Act 2, we see Chris's insistence on wiping out Larry's memory so he can move forward with Ann.
Quote #9
Keller: Goddam, if Larry was alive he wouldn't act like this. He understood the way the world was made. He listened to me. To him the world had a forty-foot front, it ended at the building line. (3.77)
Joe's image of his dead son's worldview is about to be refuted, in a big way, by the reading of his suicide note.
Quote #10
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.