How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #1
I dont like to be laughed at.
Rawlins looked at the girls. They were sitting again and their eyes were wide and serious again. Hell, he said. It's just kids.
I dont like to be laughed at, whispered Blevins. (828-30)
This sequence is the first that highlights Blevins' sensitivity to slights on his honor, which sometimes prompts him to rash action, including some of his defining criminal acts. Despite the innocence of the laughter and the youth of the girls doing the laughing, he seems very disturbed, suggesting a deep insecurity.
Quote #2
I grew up in a world of men […]. I was also rebellious […] yet I think that I had no wish to break things. Or perhaps only those things that wished to break me. The names of the entities that have power to constrain us change with time. Convention and authority are replaced by infirmity. But my attitude toward them has not changed. Has not changed. (1948)
How would you explain Alfonsa's feelings about authority here? Why would she be rebellious, disgusted with the powers constraining her, yet have no wish to "break" things? What might she stand to lose?
Quote #3
The captain had put one arm around the boy, or he put his hand in the small of his back. Like some kindly advisor. The other man walked behind them carrying the rifle and Blevins disappeared into the ebony trees […]. There seemed insufficient substance to him to be the object of men's wrath. There seemed nothing about him sufficient to fuel any enterprise at all. (2669-70)
Blevins' smallness as he is being led to death, contrasted with the apparent (yet false) gentleness of the captain's manner, suggests a fundamental, disproportional injustice to the act that follows—like squashing a bug with one of those gigantic battle Q-Tips that people use in American Gladiators.
Quote #4
[The captain] said that the man they called the charro had suffered from a failure of nerve out there among the ebony trees beyond the ruins of the estancia and this a man whose brother was dead at the hands of the assassin Blevins and this a man who had paid money that certain arrangements be made which the captain had been at some pains himself to make. (2688)
While the charro's loss of nerve may be understandable when faced with the opportunity to shoot a child, the captain frames the whole incident as a business transaction—a mere matter of arrangements, payment, etc.—and the whole morality of the incident seems alien to him. His mercenary character and lack of feeling come through strongly here.
Quote #5
This man came to me. I do not go to him. He came to me. Speaking of justice. Speaking of the honor of his family. Do you think men truly want these things? I dont think many men want these things. (2689)
For all his seeming villainy, the captain reveals a curious moral absolutism here: if they are to be truly held as ideals, honor and justice must be preserved by all means, even if that leads to shooting a 13-year-old child. Whether this cynicism is due to deeply held beliefs or just a defense mechanism against his own immorality is another question.
Quote #6
I was always with these older boys because I want to learn every thing. So on this night at the fiesta of San Pedro […] there was this woman and all these boys is go out with this woman and they is have this woman. And I am the last one. And I go out to the place where is this woman and she refuse me because she say I am too young or something like that.
What does a man do? You see. I can no go back because they will all see that I dont go with this woman. […]
Maybe they tell her to refuse me. So they can laugh. They give her some money or something like that. But I dont let whores make trouble for me. When I come back there is no laughing. […] That has always been my way in this world. I am the one when I go someplace then there is no laughing. (2706-9)
This story reveals a situation similar to Blevins' own, albeit with added misogyny: Blevins too hangs out with older boys who mess with him, and he also does not like to be laughed at. In some ways Blevins's pursuit of his honor and property mirrors that of the man who eventually kills him: these things seem so essential to who they are that they are willing to kill or do violence to get them (kinda like Black Friday shoppers, actually).
Quote #7
The cuchillero [knife-wielding assassin] spoke no word. His movements were precise and without rancor. John Grady knew that he was hired. (2993)
The scene with the cuchillero provides a counterpoint to the violence in the novel motivated by passion or a sense justice: the cuchillero is a dispassionate and precise killer, caring nothing for John Grady or his situation—only the job itself.
Quote #8
I'm sorry I shant see you again. I've been at some pains to tell you about myself because among other reasons I think we should know who our enemies are. I've known people to spend their lives nursing a hatred of phantoms and they were not happy people.
I dont hate you.
You shall.
We'll see. (3431-4)
The hatred and desire for revenge mentioned here by Alfonsa is quite different from the violence and passion surrounding the death of Blevins: it is a much more slow-burning emotion built on broken relationships, and one which may take much longer to gestate than that created by violent acts. The novel never reveals whether this actually comes true.
Quote #9
I aint goin to kill you, he said. I'm not like you.
The captain didnt answer. (3762-3)
What is the morality implied by John's refusal to kill the captain here? How does this relate to his inner conflict over the deed? How does the blanket statement "I'm not like you" in this scene define the contrast between their characters?
Quote #10
I almost done it again.
Done what, killed somebody?
Yessir.
The Mexican captain?
Yessir. Captain. Whatever he was. He was what they call a madrina. Not even a real peace officer.
But you didnt. […]
I wasnt even mad at him. Or I didnt feel like I was. That boy he shot, I didnt hardly even know him. I felt bad about it. But he wasnt nothin to me. […] The reason I wanted to kill him was because I stood there and let him walk that boy out in the trees and shoot him and I never said nothin. (3906-11, 3923)
Where is John's desire for revenge here—against the captain, or against himself? Why is John so angry at himself, and what does that say about his system of morals?