How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #1
They'd put an awning up over the gravesite but the weather was all sideways and it did no good. The canvas rattled and flapped and the preacher's words were lost in the wind. (17)
What do you make of the fact that the words for John's dead grandfather get drowned out by the weather? If this was an episode of "Man vs. Wild," and the wind was the "Wild," who would be winning here?
Quote #2
What he loved in horses was what he loved in men, the blood and the heat of the blood that ran them. All his reverence and all his fondness and all the leanings of his life were for the ardenthearted and they would always be so and never be otherwise. (21)
What's the connection between blood, men, and horses? What does it mean that they are connected in this way?
Quote #3
His father rode sitting forward slightly in the saddle, holding the reins in one hand about two inches above the saddlehorn. So thin and frail, lost in his clothes. Looking over the country with those sunken eyes as if the world out there had been altered or made suspect by what he'd seen of it elsewhere. As if he might never see it right again. Or worse did see it right at last. See it as it had always been, would forever be. (242)
John's father seems scarred by his experiences in World War II, and it affects how he sees the land about. What could it mean to "see [the country] right" in this instance? What connections can you make between land and mental state in the novel's early going?