How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
When Messner came now he often found everyone in the yard. The priest got up from his digging and waved.
"How is the world?" Father Arguedas said to him.
"Impatient," Messner said. His Spanish kept improving, but still he asked for Gen. (10.19-21)
Yep, everyone's hanging out and chilling in the yard like a 4th of July barbecue. It's a community. But a community that doesn't realize how loudly and messily the outside world is going to barge into its party. Messner reminds Father Arguedas here, but it doesn't seem to sink in for most of the people in the yard. Those fireworks ain't going to be pretty.
Quote #8
Today, Ishmael, who was regularly humiliated in soccer, had set up the chess set on a low table near the piano and played with Mr. Hosokawa. (10.51)
In case we needed any more proof that the original distinctions between terrorists and hostages have blurred into some sort of larger community, the young terrorist Ishmael is practicing his chess with Mr. Hosokawa. Like the soccer games, the fact that General Benjamin and Mr. H play regularly really shows we've left behind the days when the two groups saw themselves as wholly separate—heck, not just separate: enemies. There are still differences, but no one really remembers what they are.
Quote #9
It felt like their own private city, which was exactly what the bride wanted, a very quiet wedding in the birthplace of Giacomo Puccini. A breeze came up and she held down her hat with her hand. (Epilogue.3)
Why so quiet? Because the community Gen and Roxane met in the unnamed South American country is mostly not here? Or because the people who would have been their partners in that community are dead, not to mention a bunch of the other terrorists who in a way became their friends? Okay, lots of reasons. Anyway, it's symbolically appropriate the Thibaults are here, because they're a couple who were half in the hostages' world and half out of it for most of the book. Who better to see Gen and Roxane through the transition to being together in the outside world?