How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Hospitals are places where Death visits. But Death comes to the world in many unexpected places. (22.30)
In this quote Naomi is talking about the boys killing the chicken near the school, but is that the only unexpected place that death comes? What other places does death turn up unexpectedly? Is death ever expected?
Quote #8
Perhaps, in the end, it's Penny Barker who really convinces me that Father is dead. I say the words so casually. "My father's dead." It's as if I've known for years, yet when I actually hear myself talking I feel a strange shock as if I am telling a monstrous lie. (32.1)
Why do you think that Naomi feels she's lying when she tells Penny Parker that her dad is dead? What is it about speaking of death that changes its reality?
Quote #9
The last day she spent with her mother and sister in Tokyo, she said they sat on the tatami and talked, remembering their childhood and the days they went chestnut-picking together. They parted with laughter. The following night, Grandma Kato's sister, their mother and her sister's husband died in the B-29 bombings of March 9, 1945. (37.15)
Just when you think that everything is going great, death shows up again. This moment is even more shocking because only a few sentences earlier the family had welcomed the brand-new baby girl into their midst. That's a total about-face in fortune.