How we cite our quotes: (Poem.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Harley didn't use to like beer at all, and maybe this was something that was different about him now, after the war. He drank a lot of beer now. (V.45)
We're introduced to Harley's alcohol abuse in a really nonchalant way, as though it's no big deal. That's probably because Harley himself tries to downplay his addiction.
Quote #2
He spent the rest of the afternoon spitting into the river, and they had to keep laughing because he kept saying, "Ugh! Awful! It tastes like poison!" (V.49)
By depicting Harley's experience of his first taste of beer, the novel suggests that liking beer isn't something that comes naturally. Developing a taste for beer is associated with the corrupting influence of white culture and the war.
Quote #3
People called it "going up the line," and the bars were built one after the other alongside 66, beginning at Budville and extending six or seven miles past San Fidel to the Whiting Brothers' station near McCartys. (V.71)
"Going up the line" really seems excessive, doesn't it? Over the course of the novel, we see several characters "go up the line," and it always means trouble.
Quote #4
It had been a victory for him; he had outsmarted all of them—his parents, his older brothers, everyone who worked to keep him away from beer and out of trouble. (V.72)
Harley acts as though getting drunk is just a harmless game. The pleasure and playfulness he finds in drinking sometimes disguises the fact that he has a serious and dangerous addiction to alcohol.
Quote #5
Liquor was medicine for the anger that made them hurt, for the pain of the loss, medicine for tight bellies and choked-up throats. (VI.12)
Liquor and medicine act in a similar way in the novel: they both ease or numb emotions. This provides temporary relief, but it doesn't ultimately heal the hurt that the veterans feel.
Quote #6
He drank the beer as if it were the tumbling ice-cold stream in the mountain canyon on the beer label. (VIII.10)
Compare this episode to the time Tayo drinks from the spring and tastes "the deep heartrock of the earth, where the water came from" (VI.33). Drinking the natural water feels like a gift from the earth, whereas drinking the beer (sarcastically compared here to water from a stream) only makes Tayo feel bitter.
Quote #7
How much longer would they last? How long before one of them got stabbed in a bar fight, not just knocked out? How long before this old truck swerved off the road or head-on into a bus? But it didn't make much difference anyway. The drinking and hell raising were just things they did, [ . . . ] passing the time away, waiting for it to end. (XXI.76)
Tayo starts to think seriously about the dangers of his friends' excessive drinking. But even though he's becoming aware of the risks, he isn't fully convinced that drinking is a bad thing. After all, he's not really interested in staying alive at this point.
Quote #8
From the doorway of a second-hand store he could see feet, toes poking through holes in the socks. Someone sleeping off the night before, but without his boots now, because somebody had taken them to trade for a bottle of cheap wine. The guy had his head against the door; his brown face was peaceful and he was snoring loudly. (XXII.9)
The sleeping drunk is a stock comic figure, and Tayo smiles when he sees this one. But there's a dark side: serious societal problems like alcoholism and poverty lie under the seemingly harmless surface.