How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
His neighbors had every manner he admired, and in turn they despised his religion, his accent, and his style. They made the lives of his wife and children miserable, but he cursed them all [...]. (5.13)
This is how Pop deals with the prejudice. He gets rich and wants to be accepted by the members of the wealthy community where he lives, but they reject him. His own ugly feelings likely contribute to the sense of self-loathing we see in both Esther and Deb. Pop has sort of taught them to despise themselves.
Quote #2
For a glimpse of their true value they had only to look into their neighbors' eyes or to hear Pop's remarks if the soup was cold [...]. (5.15)
Deborah grows up in the shadow of Pop's self-hatred, as well as in the shadow of prejudice from her community. The negativity she feels about herself is only reinforced by the way she and her family are looked down on just for being Jewish.
Quote #3
The second change came when she was nine and it came with her shaming. It was the first day of her third year at the camp, and still fighting against what she felt was the injustice of having been born as herself, she reported the two girls who had ridiculed her and refused to let her walk with them […]. "Who actually said those words to you: 'We don't walk with stinking Jews—' Was it Claire or Joan?" (8.12)
Deborah tried to report an incident of prejudice to her camp counselor, but she got the girl's name wrong when reporting it, so her claim is dismissed. From that point on, the girls at camp, as well as the counselors, believe that Deborah is a liar, and they ridicule her. The incident reinforces Deborah's ideas about her own worthlessness.
Quote #4
When you're nuts, it hardly matters that you're a nutty Jew or a nutty Holy Roller. (23.47)
Deborah acknowledges that Jews have their own prejudices against Gentiles since they've been told that the Gentiles will betray them in the end. Deborah's been pretending that all the non-Jewish people she meets are Jewish in her mind so that she can be closer to them. Then she tells Dr. Fried that the hospital leveled the playing field for her: mental illness crosses identity boundaries.
Quote #5
But in the neighborhood the codes of long-established wealth still prevailed and the little-girl "dirty-Jew," who already accepted that she was dirty, made a good target for the bullies of the block[...] "Jew, Jew, dirty Jew; my grandmother hated your grandmother, my mother hates your mother and I hate you!" Three generations. It had a ring to it; even she should feel that." (6.58)
What effect does this type of deeply ingrained prejudice have on a person's sense of who he or she is? What about that person's self-esteem?
Quote #6
The instincts of these hating children were shared, for Deborah heard sometimes that a man named Hitler was in Germany and was killing Jews with the same kind of evil joy […]. In the camp a riding instructor mentioned acidly that Hitler was doing one good thing at least, and that was getting rid of the "garbage people." She wondered idly if they all had tumors. (6.60)
At the summer camp, Deborah's counselors (as well as a lot of the kids there) are openly anti-Semitic. Deborah's wondering whether the Jews being killed in Europe had tumors like her shows us that her identity is wrapped up in the idea that she deserves to be hated. She believes she's defective and broken in some way. This is how she feels "other"—like an outsider who isn't even part of Earth.
Quote #7
They took Deborah to a small, plain room, guarding her there until the showers were empty. She was watched there also [...] Deborah did what she was told dutifully, but she kept her arm slightly tuned inward so as to hide from sight the two small, healing puncture wounds on the wrist. (2.1)
Deborah's parents hovered over her in the first chapter. Here, she's being watched by the hospital staff. Having secrets—about her suicide attempt or her self-burning, for example—is one way for her to have something of her own. Shortly after this scene, Deborah slips into Yr, where she at least has privacy. In what ways does privacy help a person explore his or her identity?
Quote #8
The hidden strength is too deep a secret. But in the end…in the end it is our only ally. (2.24)
Dr. Fried remarks that there should be a test to find the healthy aspects of mentally patients, because it's these patients' inner strength that will give them comfort and help them heal. Mental health issues don't change the essence of who you are.
Quote #9
She had been living by the Secret Calendar (Yr did not measure time as the world did) and had returned to the Heavy Calendar in the middle of the day, and having then that wonderful and omniscient feeling of changing, she had headed a class paper: Now Januce. (3.1)
This is what secrets give the secret-keeper—a feeling of power. Here, Deborah is in control of going back and forth to Yr, and this control makes her feel like she has both power and a new cool, magical identity. She calls herself Januce—a reference to Janus, the Roman mythological figure who acted as a gatekeeper between worlds.
Quote #10
The mark on the paper was the emblem of coming from Yr's time to Earth's, but being caught while still in transition, she had to answer for both of them. Such an answer would have been the unveiling of a horror—a horror from which she would not have awakened rationally; and so she had lied and dissembled, with her heart choking her. (3.2)
Secrets give Deborah a sense of powerful and special identity, but her hiding becomes a burden. Crossing back and forth between worlds has caused her to build barriers between Yr and Earth. She wants to protect her identity, but there is punishment from Yr if she slips its secrets.