How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #1
They rode singlefile down the cart track that served as a street. Half a dozen low houses with walls of mud brick slumping into ruin. A few jacales of brush and mud with brush roofs and a pole corral where five scrubby horses with big heads stood looking solemnly at the horses passing in the road. (768)
This desolate atmosphere—the mud houses, rut of a road, and lifeless horses—and the empty country surrounding creates an air of remoteness in the boys' initial passage into Mexico. This is definitely not a MetLife resort.
Quote #2
Rawlins shook his head. Drinkin cactus juice in old Mexico, he said. What do you reckon they're sayin at home about now?
I reckon they're sayin we're gone, said John Grady.
Rawlins sat with his legs stretched out before him and his boots crossed and his hat over one knee and looked out at the alien land and nodded. We are, aint we? he said. (807-9)
The characters' initial wonderment at being in Mexico—wondering about the people, food and customs—will later give way to more pressing concerns about survival. Also, "hittin' the Cactus Juice" should be everyone's new favorite phrase.
Quote #3
They were zacateros headed into the mountains to gather chino grass. If they were surprised to see Americans horseback in that country they gave no sign. […] The Mexicans sat their horses and took in their outfits with slow movements of their dark eyes. They themselves were a rough lot, dressed half in rags, their hats marbled with grease and sweat, their boots mended with raw cowhide […]. They smelled of smoke and tallow and sweat and they looked as wild and strange as the country they were in […]. They looked out over the terrain as if it were a problem to them. Something they'd not quite decided about. (888, 892)
The zacateros here are portrayed as cautious, rough like the land itself, but yet seemingly distant from it as they eye it with suspicion. This is the first time they encounter another group of men at length on the road; this is the sort of encounter that the narrator usually narrates in much more detail than people's passing kindnesses.
Quote #4
They rode till noon and past noon. There was nothing along the road save the country and there was nothing in the country at all. The only sound was the steady clop of the horses along the road and the periodic spat of Blevins' tobacco juice behind them. (905)
Why does the narrator say that "there was nothing in the country at all," instead focusing on sounds? What importance might sound have here for understanding the land, and how does it create an atmosphere?
Quote #5
They slowed the horses and rode to the crest of the ridge. Nothing moved in all that gray landscape. They dismounted and walked out along the ridge. Small birds were beginning to call from the chaparral. (1272)
This scene is from the first morning after Rawlins and John Grady are pursued for Blevins' horse theft. McCarthy emphasizes the lack of movement and light across the land in the pre-dawn moments, heightening the tension.
Quote #6
She'd been away at school for three years. Her mother lived in Mexico and she went to the house on Sundays for dinner and sometimes she and her mother would dine alone in the city and go to the theatre or the ballet. Her mother thought life on the hacienda was lonely and yet living in the city she seemed to have few friends. (1836)
This is one of the very few, brief glimpses we see of Mexican city life in the novel: the rest is spent in small villages, the ranch, the prison, or barren countryside. Given the more refined activities Alejandra and her mother engage in while in the city, it suggests that there are entire vast aspects of society missing from the novel's portrayal of Mexico.
Quote #7
You are not the first Americans to be here, said the captain. In this place. I have friends in this place and you will be making these arrangements with these peoples. […] You stay here you going to die. Then come other problems. Papers is lost. Peoples cannot be found. […] No one wants to have these troubles. Who can say that some body was here? We dont have this body. Some crazy person, he can say that God is here. But everybody knows that God is no here. (2692, 2698)
The captain's corruption suggests a critique of the legal system—there is a known procedure ("arrangements") and familiarity dealing with foreigners, yet due to their lack of funds, John Grady and Rawlins don't seem to fit into this notion of what "arrangements" Americans should be able to make. The captain's hedging, bureaucratic language, feigning ignorance, heightens the sense that this failure is institutional.
Quote #8
The prison was no more than a small walled village and within it occurred a constant seethe of barter and exchange […] and within this bartering ran a constant struggle for status and position. Underpinning it all like the fiscal standard in commercial societies lay a bedrock of depravity and violence where in an egalitarian absolute every man was judged by a single standard and that was his readiness to kill. (2716)
How might a willingness to kill be like "a fiscal standard in commercial societies"? Does the particular choice of metaphor (money) have any significance here? Can you please also make a connection to Wu-Tang Clan's hit song "Cash Rules Everything Around Me"? Thanks.
Quote #9
At a crossroads station somewhere on the other side of Paredón they picked up five farmworkers who spoke to him with great circumspection and courtesy […]. He drew on his cigarette. He looked at their faces. One of them older than the rest nodded at his cheap new clothes.
Él va a ver a su novia [he's going to see his girlfriend], he said.
They looked at him earnestly and he nodded and said that it was true.
Ah, they said. Qué bueno. And after and for a long time to come he'd have reason to evoke the recollection of those smiles and to reflect upon the good will which provoked them for it had power to protect and to confer honor and to strengthen resolve and it had power to heal men and to bring them to safety long after all other resources were exhausted. (3274-81)
Brief, tender moments such as this illustrate a much less hard-edged vision of Mexico, where common folk have common decency, and is repeated in the various offers of lodging and courtesy that the travelers encounter. This one is perhaps the most striking, due to the sweeping conclusions it reaches and because it is one of the few moments in the novel that looks ahead to John Grady's future.
Quote #10
The societies to which I have been exposed seemed to me largely machines for the suppression of women. Society is very important in Mexico. […] In the Spaniard's heart is a great yearning for freedom, but only his own. A great love of truth and honor in all its forms, but not in its substance. And a deep conviction that nothing can be proven except that it be made to bleed. Virgins, bulls, men. (3393)
In contrast to Don Héctor's comments about a lack of faith in the divisive impulses of European reasoning, Alfonsa here faults regressive traditions as the source of division social conflict. The novel never attempts to reconcile these opposing viewpoints, instead being content to point out the complexity of the world in which they both reside.