How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
In our school there were different groups you would run with, depending on your station in life. There were the town kids, whose daddies owned the hardware store or what have you—they were your cheerleaders and your football players. Then there were hoodlums, the motorcycle types that cut down trees on Halloween. And then there were the rest of us, the poor kids and the farm kids. Greasers, we were called, or Nutters. The main rule was that there was absolutely no mixing. (9.21)
Taylor isn't exactly describing an ideal set-up for community feeling here, but her high school experiences do teach her one important thing about humans in society. For people like her classmate Scotty, for example, who "didn't belong to any group" (9.25), social loneliness and isolation were devastating. Without having someone to belong to, it's easy to feel worthless and disposable. And even being a Greaser or a Nutter is better than that.
Quote #8
I couldn't sleep nights. I went to work early and left late, even when Mattie kept telling me to go home. Lou Ann took off a week from Red Hot Mama's, putting her new promotion at risk, just to stay home with Turtle. The three of them—she, Edna, and Virgie—would sit together on the front porch with the kids, making sure we all understood it was nobody's fault. (12.77)
When Taylor's shock and depression makes her incapable of caring for Turtle or herself, Lou Ann steps up to the plate. Together, she and Edna and Virgie form a tight circle around Turtle, and Taylor too, proving that a community of caregivers is stronger than one parent alone. Especially when that parent is too depressed to do anything except spend her spare time with spare tires. And used ones, at that.
Quote #9
"Look at those guys in the park with no place to go," I said. "And women, too. I've seen whole families out there. While we're in here trying to keep the dry-cleaner bags out of the kids' reach, those mothers are using dry-cleaner bags for their children's clothes, for God's sake. For raincoats. And feeding them out of the McDonald's dumpster. You'd think that life alone would be punishment enough for those people, but then the cops come around waking them up mornings, knocking them around with their sticks. You've seen it." (12.93)
The more Taylor begins to recognize social inequalities, abuses, and injustices in the world, the more she is saddened by how little sympathy human beings can have for one another. She realizes that many people in the neighborhood would rather see the "riffraff" cleared out by the police than lend a hand to change their situation. In these moments, community feeling fails, and individualism triumphs. Cue the icy shiver down your spine.