How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
From a distance down the hall they heard the grate of a large key in a lock and again Jacob stiffened, moaning softly, "Not for her—our little Debby..." He did not see the sudden, ruthless look in his daughter's face. (1.23)
Jacob doesn't want his daughter, who he still sees as a little girl, to be locked away—but he also doesn't see how she harbors some ill feelings toward him. This disconnect foreshadows what we will learn later about his treatment of Deborah.
Quote #2
She looked like a shock victim. As she left, he felt the wrench of her going in the two parents... after their good-bye, they, too, looked like people in shock, and he thought briefly: wound shock—the cutting away of a daughter. (1.25-26)
The ward doctor observes here how the parents seem to feel so connected to the daughter—but this observation turns out to be ironic, since the Blaus don't actually communicate with Deborah. The connection is pretty tenuous.
Quote #3
Deborah suddenly recalled the picture of her parents standing very single and yet together on the other side of the shatter-proof locked door. Not aforethought this thing, but more than a little with malice. (3.47)
Does it seem like Deborah resents the fact that her parents have left her at the hospital? Does she think they're being mean about it? Is she maybe happy to get away? Why or why not?
Quote #4
A child's independence is too big a risk for the shaky balance of some parents. (5.1)
Dr. Fried muses that some parents want to help their kids but are nevertheless threatened by idea of these kids gaining independence. Well, that's a doozy. Why do you think parents don't want their kids to grow up and leave?
Quote #5
Esther's daughter was blonde! A singular, thrilling, impossible fair-skinned blonde [...] for Pop she was the final retort to a long-dead village nobleman and his fair-skinned daughters. This one would go in gold. (5.16)
Pop puts a lot of pressure on Deborah, the blonde golden child, to be the fulfillment of the family's dreams. Deborah doesn't have the more typical facial features of Pop's Latvian family or Jacob's Polish family, and an undercurrent of Jewish self-loathing might have something to do with the fact that Pop is so excited that Deborah is blonde. Like, she's Jewish, be she looks like she's not—which to him is a good thing. It's another sad example of people not accepting themselves and wishing they were something else.
Quote #6
Jacob was consort of the dynasty, but Deborah—golden, gift-showered Deborah—always smiling and contented, was a central pin on which the dream could turn. And then they found out that their golden toy was flawed. (5.18-19)
Once it's discovered that Deborah has a tumor, her family starts to realize that maybe she's not going to be perfect and save the family and be a representative for the fulfillment of all their dreams. In a way, they start to think of her as damaged—and she totally internalizes that.
Quote #7
"Am I not what you wanted? Do you have to correct my brain, too?" (5.32)
Esther recalls Deborah saying these words with "bitterness" even at just ten years old; it was after the Blaus made her go to see a child psychologist. Deborah's problems have already basically formed at this point.
Quote #8
The Families. "Make him well," they say. "Make her well," they say, "with good table manners and a future according to our agreed-on dream!" She sighed. Even the intelligent, the honest, the good, find it too easy to sell their children. Deceits and vanities and arrogances that they would never stoop to for themselves they perpetrate on their children." (14.17)
After Jacob Blau insists on seeing Deborah, even after Dr. Fried has advised against it, Dr. Fried muses that parents live through their children and put a lot of pressure on them to live out their own fantasies and unfulfilled dreams. They sometimes want them to take unrealistic life paths they'd never expect themselves to take.
Quote #9
In the perfumed and carefully tended little girl, a tumor was growing. The first symptom was an embarrassing incontinence, and how righteously wrathful the rigid governess was! But the laziness could not be cured by shaming or whipping or threats. (5.19)
Deb's parents didn't realize at first that she had a tumor in her urethra. She was five and started having accidents. The nanny in charge of Deborah would yell at her and beat her for having them; it was just assumed that Deborah was being bad. Esther explains this to Dr. Fried and cries out that she didn't know what was wrong with Deborah. But the damage had already been done: Deborah has believed from that point on that something is terribly wrong with her at the deepest level.