How we cite our quotes: (Name of Play, Act #)
Quote #1
One is struck at once by the strange impression [her face] gives in repose of not living flesh but a wonderfully life-like pale mask, in which only the deep-set eyes, of a dark violet blue, are alive. (Homecoming, Act 1)
Above all, one is struck by the same strange, life-like mask impression her face gives in repose. (Homecoming, Act 1)
One is struck at once by the peculiar quality his face in repose has of being a lifelike mask rather than living flesh. (Homecoming, Act 1)
His face is handsome in a stern, aloof fashion. It is cold and emotionless and has the same strange semblance of a life-like mask that we have already seen in the faces of his wife and daughter and Brant. (Homecoming, Act 2)
There is the same lifelike mask quality of his face in repose. (The Hunted, Act 1)
OK, OK, we get it. The playwright's almost identical descriptions here (respectively) of Christine, Lavinia, Brant, and Ezra, and Orin tells us what's happened to the emotional life in this family. These descriptions, even without the action of the play, set the mood of doom and gloom. It's a picture of faces in a casket. Real death, when it comes, isn't gonna be much of a change for these folks.
Quote #2
LAVINIA: I couldn't very well consult you when Seth asked me. You had gone to New York—to see Grandfather. Is he feeling any better? He seems to have been sick so much this past year.
CHRISTINE: Yes. He's much better now. […] I've been out to the greenhouse to pick these. I felt our tomb needed a little brightening. Each time I come back after being away it appears more like a sepulcher! The "whited" one of the Bible—pagan temple front stuck like a mask on Puritan gray ugliness. […] (Homecoming, Act 1)
A tomb's an appropriate metaphor for the Mannon home. What belongs in a tomb? Dead people. It sounds to us like Christine is implying that everybody in that house is already dead—maybe not physically, but emotionally. More than a few Mannons are going to be actually dead by the end of the trilogy.
Quote #3
MANNON: I've got to leave for a few days. Then I must go back and disband my brigade. Peace ought to be signed soon. The President's assassination is a frightful calamity. But it can't change the course of events.
LAVINIA: Poor man! It's dreadful that he should die just at his moment of victory.
MANNON: Yes! All victory ends in the defeat of death, that's sure. But does defeat end in the victory of death? That's what I wonder! (Homecoming, Act 3)
Ezra himself is about to be "assassinated." His philosophical musings about death are foreshadowing his own.
Quote #4
MANNON: […] All right, then. I came home to surrender to you—what's inside me. I love you. I loved you then, and all the years between, and I love you now.
CHRISTINE: Ezra, Please!
MANNON: I want that said. Maybe you have forgotten it. I wouldn't blame you. I guess I haven't said it or showed it much—ever. Something queer in me keeps me mum about things I'd like most to say—keeps me hiding the things I'd like to show. Something keeps me sitting numb in my own heart—like a statue of a dead man in a town square. (Homecoming, Act 3)
This is a pretty shattering statement from the dead of this lifeless clan. He finally sees how dead he's been inside. More foreshadowing from poor, doomed Ezra.
Quote #5
MANNON: It was seeing death all the time in this war got me to thinking these things. Death was so common, it didn't mean anything. That freed me to think of life. Queer, isn't it? Death made me think of life. Before that life had only made me think of death!
CHRISTINE: Why are you talking of death?
MANNON: That's always been the Mannons' way of thinking. They went to the white meeting-house on Sabbaths and meditated on death. Life was a dying. Being born was starting to die. Death was being born. How in hell people ever got such notions! That white meeting-house. It stuck in my mind--clean-scrubbed and whitewashed--a temple of death! But in this war I've seen too many white walls splattered with blood that counted no more than dirty water. I've seen dead men scattered about, no more important than rubbish to be got rid of. That made the white meeting-house seem meaningless--making so much solemn fuss over death! (Homecoming, Act 3)
Ezra's real experience with death during the war has made him question all the religious ideas about death that were drummed into him as a kid—that death is rebirth, that it's a solemn and dignified affair, that this life is just an illusion, etc.
Quote #6
ORIN: Where's Mother? I thought she'd surely be waiting for me. God, how I've dreamed of coming home! I thought it would never end, that we'd go on murdering and being murdered until no one was left alive! Home at last! No, by God, I must be dreaming again! But the house looks strange. Or is it something in me? I was out of my head so long, everything has seemed queer since I came back to earth. Did the house always look so ghostly and dead?
PETER: That's only the moonlight, you chump.
We interrupt this morbid broadcast to give you a perspective from someone not totally steeped in death and misery. Peter's comment is like suddenly throwing open a window and letting in some sun. He's definitely not a Mannon.
Quote #7
CHRISTINE: Go on! Try and convince Orin of my wickedness! He loves me! He hated his father! He's glad he's dead! Even if he knew I had killed him, he'd protect me! For God's sake, keep Orin out of this! He's still sick! He's changed! He's grown hard and cruel! All he thinks about is death! Don't tell him about Adam! He would kill him! I couldn't live then! I would kill myself! (The Hunted, Act 2)
Notice anything about this passage? No, not all the exclamation points. It's a death sandwich: psychological death and suicide in between two slices of murder. If you ever forget what genre you're reading, this outburst by Christine will jog your memory.
Quote #8
ORIN: Do you still sing, Hazel? I used to hear you singing—down there. It made me feel life might still be alive somewhere—that, and my dreams of Mother, and the memory of Vinnie bossing me around like a drill sergeant. I used to hear you singing at the queerest times—so sweet and clear and pure! It would rise above the screams of the dying—
Even when he tries to recall pleasant memories, Orin just can't shake the horrors of war and memories of death.
Quote #9
ORIN: One of the bravest things he'd seen! Oh, that's too rich! I'll tell you the joke about that heroic deed. It really began the night before when I sneaked through their lines. I was always volunteering for extra danger. I was so scared anyone would guess I was afraid! There was a thick mist and it was so still you could hear the fog seeping into the ground. I met a Reb crawling toward our lines. His face drifted out of the mist toward mine. I shortened my sword and let him have the point under the ear. He stared at me with an idiotic look as if he'd sat on a tack—and his eyes dimmed and went out—
LAVINIA: Don't think of that now.
ORIN: Before I'd gotten back I had to kill another in the same way. It was like murdering the same man twice. I had a queer feeling that war meant murdering the same man over and over, and that in the end I would discover the man was myself! (The Hunted, Act 3)
One thing we hear over and over from the returned soldiers is that the romantic idea about the glory of war is just BS. It's just death and horror.