How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"Is Don Quixote mad or is it the world that embraces these ideals of the knight-errant that is actually mad? That's the rhetorical question that Cervantes seems to be posing to us." (2.10)
It's no coincidence that Cameron is studying Don Quixote when he gets sick; there are a lot of similarities between his hallucinated epic quest and Cervantes' classic tale. Going Bovine is full of these rhetorical questions regarding reality and which world is actually real. Is Cameron's quest real? Is everyone else ignoring what's real when they look right past Dulcie's wings?
Quote #2
"The point is probability and reality. And that's where parallel universes come in. Reality splits into two possible outcomes—one where the cat lives; another where the cat dies. From every choice you make, another world is created where a different reality happens." (2.40)
Schrödinger's Cat is a famous paradox that speaks to one of the main themes in our story: If two realities exist at one time until our discovery of them reduces them to one reality, does that mean that if we don't get involved there are multiple realities existing on different planes? Whoa. In other words, if Cameron thinks his quest is real, but the rest of us are just seeing a dying young man in a coma, which of our realities is real, or are they both reality and just existing on parallel planes?
Quote #3
"You're not real. I'm hallucinating."
"Do I seem real to you right now?" I nod.
"Well, there you go." (15.8-10)
Dulcie likes to keep things stress-free. It doesn't matter what's real, so much as what feels real to Cameron. If he thinks she's real, then she is. Simple.
Quote #4
"I am Morpheus, king of dreams," he says, and the speakers carry his deep voice for blocks. "We all walk in a land of dreams. For what are we but atoms and hope, a handful of stardust and sinew. We are weary travelers trying to find our way home on a road that never ends. Am I a part of your dream? Or are you but a part of mine? Welcome my brother, Phantasmos, for this is surely a phantasmagoria, a fantasy world, and we are all players." (18.75)
Here's another theory for you: We all just live in dreams, and we'll never know whether they're our dreams or if we're in someone else's dream. Either that or this is all Cameron's dream, and we are starting to see the evidence of how much pot he really smokes… Your call, Shmoopers.
Quote #5
People drift in and out in my dream like actors in a play. Eubie comes to visit. He slips headphones on my ears so I can hear "Cypress Grove Blues," and I want to tell him that I've been to New Orleans, that I've seen Junior Webster, that I played bass for him, but it's a dream, and the words won't come. (21.49)
Is this a dream? Or has Cam momentarily regained consciousness to reality? Most likely it's the latter—as the reader we can see that a visit from Eubie is a far more realistic occurrence than fighting off fire giants and traveling with a Viking god disguised as a yard gnome.
Quote #6
"Can anybody else see you besides me?" I ask.
"I suppose they could if they wanted to, but maybe what they see isn't what you see," Dulcie answers in her typically cryptic fashion. (22.9-10)
Once again Dulcie is throwing out philosophical bombs and then just shrugging her shoulders. She's pretty good at making us contemplate the nature of perspective and then acting like it's no big deal.
Quote #7
"No one's gonna get you here, Cameron. The world is not going to end. I promise you that. You're one hundred percent safe. As for your disease, doctors are wrong all the time. They need sick people in order to make money."
"Only people who want to get sick actually get sick. They do it to themselves," Ruth adds. "You can even think yourself well if you want to." (24.124)
The folks over at CESSNAB live in a reality totally constructed from their own delusions. But whatever makes them happy, right? Then again, though, are they truly happy? Is denial a valid method of avoiding anything unpleasant?
Quote #8
"What if there are parallel universes where you're you, only different. You know, maybe you're a doctor or a gravedigger or a ninja. Maybe here, in this universe, your—your mom died when you were five"—I choke on the word "died"—"but in another world, she's alive, helping you make sand castles on the beach." […] "But all those other roads, those other choices you don't make? They must get to live somewhere. I mean, maybe…" […]"I'm just saying that it's totally possible that things don't happen until you connect with an event, then the other choices you didn't make unfold in other worlds."
"Whatever, dude," Gonzo says, hands up. "I'm fine with this reality. In fact, it's already more reality than I can handle. I'm not ready to take on another one." (35.5-16)
Schrödinger's Cat rears its ugly head once more, but this time Gonzo isn't stoned and things are just a bit too real for him. He feels like he's in over his head, and now isn't the time to start contemplating parallel dimensions where the choices you haven't made live on in perpetuity.
Quote #9
Dulcie's leaning over me. Her face is a small, glowing nightlight in the dark. "Hey, cowboy. You don't look so good."
"Can't breathe."
"Yes you can. You're just having a bad dream. Relax."
I try to take a deep breath, but it's like there's a Goddamn elephant on my chest, and my muscles are doing their twitch-and-spaz disco routine. For a minute, I hear Glory saying, "Relax, baby. Just need your blood pressure."
"I can't sleep," I say. I hear sounds. Beep. Whirr. Muffled voices. I don't see Gonzo. The bed next to me is empty. Glory's holding my wrist, checking my pulse, a frown one more line on her face. When she's through, she wipes my brow with a washcloth.
"Sweet boy. Get some rest." She clicks the bolus, giving me a new bump of morphine.
"Glory, I can't go to sleep. I'm afraid I'll die." She gives it another click, and my body feels light as goose down.
"Cameron, wake up. It's Dulcie."
"Huh?"
I'm back in the hotel room, away from dreams. Dulcie's stroking my face. "What did you mean, you were afraid you'd die if you went to sleep?"
"I saw Glory. In the hospital."
"Cam, you're with me, okay?" (43.78-88)
This is a perfect example of the juxtaposition between what's happening in our world and how Cam's hallucinations have become his reality. When he glimpses Glory in the hospital he sees what we would see—a very sick boy getting closer and closer to the end of his life. But in his mind this is the dream and his reality is that he is talking to his punk-rock guardian angel in a motel room somewhere in Florida.
Quote #10
Sometimes on the sides of the roads I see things that aren't there: Mom and Dad holding each other. Balder running through the grass toward a glimmering hall. Glory switching out the bag on an IV pole. The old lady with her garden shears; she waves to me. The coyote. The road-runner. The Copenhagen Interpretation playing Hacky Sack with the Calabi Yau. Just a bunch of travelers on the same road. (48.8)
Once again, Cam is seeing a mixture of things he may be aware of from his hospital bed and the delusions that his rotting brain is presenting as reality. But to him it is all real. And that's not too shabby.
Quote #11
"So you're saying none of this is real?" I ask.
He checks his reflection in the cool steel of his blade. "I'm not saying that at all. Reality is what you make of it." (50.73-74)
This time it's the Wizard of Reckoning (who has revealed himself to be Bizarro Cameron) who is saying that reality has to do with perspective. What you consider to be real is therefore only real because you think it is. Deep stuff, right?