How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
However, reading in the Times-Picayune, to the Sunday issue of which we subscribe, of my late wife's passing, may God the Almighty rest her gentle soul, I at once reasoned the honorable thing could only be to again assume my paternal duties, forsaken, lo, these many years. (1.1.23)
It seems strange that Ed Sansom would only find out about his ex-wife's death through the newspaper, and equally strange that he would write out of the blue to her sister offering to turn back into a father. The formal way he talks about death, as her "passing," and asking that "God the Almighty rest her gentle soul" puts a lot of distance between him and the actual, dead woman.
Quote #2
And when they reached home she was humming it, but she felt cold and went to bed, and the doctor came, and for over a month he came everyday, but she was always cold, and Aunt Ellen was there, always smiling, and the doctor, always smiling, and the uneaten tangerines shriveled up in the icebox; and when it was over he went with Ellen to live in a dingy two-family house near Pontchartrain. (1.1.34)
The cold images are related to death, which, unfortunately, leaves us all cold in the end. Joel's mother catches cold one rainy night, and then always feels cold—it's as though death had somehow entered her little by little, like a virus. The tangerines, which can be read as a metaphor for the cold, dead woman, really hit that imagery home.
Quote #3
"I've always considered it the finest room in the house. Cousin Randolph was born here: in that very bed. And Angela Lee…Randolph's mother: a beautiful woman, originally from Memphis…died here, oh, not many years ago. We've never used it since." (1.2.31)
Welcome home, kiddo—and to your great-auntie's deathbed. Joel's room has been unused for years, because it's where a beloved family member died. It's almost like a shrine, a sacred place, and now he's been invited to live in it. This must mean that he's an important member of the family…or a super-unlucky one.