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.
Quote #4
"Papadaddy was past ninety then, and they say he ain't long for this world, so I come. That be thirteen year ago, and now it look to me like Papadaddy gonna outlive Methuselah." (1.2.84)
While Joel's mother met her fate much earlier than he would have liked, Zoo's grandfather just won't die. When she agreed to take care of him in his old age she thought it would be a short gig, but the comparison to Methuselah, a man from the Bible who lived to be 969 years old, shows that it didn't quite work out like she planned.
Quote #5
"And a man in a red coat, a Canadian Mountie, rescued us...only me, really: Mama had already frozen to death."
[...]
"Uh uh. You Mama die in the sick bed. Mister Randolph say so." (1.2.91-94)
Joel's mother's death is still pretty fresh, so this story telling might be a way of dealing with it so it doesn't hurt so badly. He invents a whole wild tale about being caught in the snow in Canada and his mother growing cold and dying (remember how she felt cold before she died in New Orleans?). Zoo calls him on it, bursting his bubble mercilessly.
Quote #6
On these dangerous evening patrols, Joel had witnessed many peculiar spectacles, like the night he'd watched a young girl waltzing stark naked to victrola music; and again, an old lady drop dead while puffing at a fairyland of candles burning on a birthday cake […]. (1.2.124)
Mortality gets lumped into all sorts of private events in this memory, where Joel and his friends used to peep into strangers' windows at night in the city. For him, death is just as strange as sex. Seeing a naked girl was as memorable as seeing a woman die. All of the mysteries of life are available if you know which window to look through.
Quote #7
The off-on flash of Zoo's gold tooth […] suggested to him a certain winking neon sign: R. R. Oliver's Funeral Estb. Darkness. R. R. Oliver's Funeral Estb. Darkness. "Downright tacky, but they don't charge too outlandish," that's what Ellen had said, standing before the plate window where a fan of gladiolas blushed livid under the electric letters publicizing a cheap but decent berth en route to the kingdom and the glory. (1.3.15)
Zoo's tooth isn't the only thing flashing in this passage; Joel, too, is having a flashback. His mother's death is always just waiting in the wings, ready to be triggered by any little thing. The reflective tooth whisks him back in time to the neon lights of the funeral parlor that buried his mother.
Quote #8
"All children are morbid: it's their one saving grace," said Randolph, and went right ahead. (1.4.19)
Randolph is about to tell Joel the story of Keg's attack on Zoo, and Miss Amy warns him not too, as the boy is too young. But Randolph's defense, that all children are "morbid," really caught our eye. Randolph means that all children are fascinated by death. Do you think he's right?
Quote #9
But then! one August afternoon, this was 1893, a child, a creole boy of Joel's years, having taken a dare to dive into the lake from a hundred-foot oak, crushed his head like a shell between two sunken logs. Soon afterwards there was a second tragedy when a crooked gambler, in much trouble with the law, swam out and never came back. [...] And then a honeymoon couple, out rowing on the lake, claimed that a hand [...] reached from the depths to capsize their boat. (1.5.27)
Death seems to come in morbid little packages in this novel. Rather than striking randomly, it hits the same spot several times. Joel, for example, loses his mother, and then ends up in Skully's Landing which is full of barely-living residents and the memories of dead people. Drownin Pond, too, seems to be the unlucky recipient of such a bundle of mortality.
Quote #10
So Mrs Jimmy Bob went to St. Louis, rented herself a room, poured kerosene all over the bed, lay down and struck a match. (1.5.27)
Whereas Randolph, Miss Amy, and Little Sunshine stay on long after their homes have been livable or profitable, Mrs. Jimmy Bob saw the end of her hotel as business the end of her life. What a dramatic way to go—we hope she didn't kill any other hotel patrons on her way out.