Quote 1
I continued to stare at the traffic light, which glowed red. Suddenly a green arrow popped on, pointing left, and the row of cars like obedient animals all went left. I laughed out loud. (5.3.19)
Adah is amused by the rules of urban American life. (It's all fun and games until someone doesn't follow the traffic laws.) Are the people following these urban laws civilized people or merely blindly obedient—and is being blindly obedient the best way to stay safe in countries like the U.S.?
Quote 2
Was I the booby prize? [...] Am I alive only because Ruth May is dead? (5.3.22)
Adah's a little different than her sisters. She doesn't blame herself for Ruth May's death; she blames Ruth May's death for her own life.
Quote 3
You would be free too. And I didn't want that. I wanted you to remember what he did to us. (5.12.48)
While Rachel and Leah don't blame their mother for what happened to them (or they don't articulate it), Adah makes no qualms about her mother's culpability. She wants to make sure she lives with the guilt. (Hey, daddy issues aren't the only issues these girls have.)
Quote 4
I was not present at Ruth May's birth but I have seen it now, because I saw each step of it played out in reverse at the end of her life. The closing parenthesis. [...] Now she will wait the rest of the time. It will be exactly as long as the time that passed before she was born. (4.10.2)
Adah describes death as the opposite of birth, like a personal circle of life. We return to the oblivion we came from. (Oh, and it sounds like Adah's been reading some e. e. cummings.)
Quote 5
The loss of a life: unwelcome. Immoral? I don't know. (6.3.3)
Adah encounters quite a dilemma as a doctor in the United States. In the Congo, death is a sometimes necessary part of life. It prevents overpopulation, and the hunger and conflict that results from it. Plus, Adah doesn't separate human life from "life" in general. All living things matter to her.
Quote 6
The death of something living is the price of our survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep. (4.3.12)
This is Adah's observation after the hunt, and this is probably why she had a so-what attitude about the lion. If humans will kill and eat animals without a second thought, why shouldn't animals be allowed a fair crack at humans?
Quote 7
When I go with them to the grocery, [Anatole and Leah] are boggled and frightened and secretly scornful. [...] It is as if our Rachel had been left suddenly in charge of everything. (5.7.6)
The grocery store, a foreign concept to anyone living in the jungles of Congo, can seem like a bright symbol of American excess (and a horrible place to hide from zombies). So much food that will never be eaten, and so many things we don't really need.
Quote 8
According to my Baptist Sunday-school teacher, a child is denied entrance to heaven merely for being born in the Congo. (2.8.4)
Once again, white privilege rears its ugly head. This is an imaginary injustice that leads to an actual injustice: when these people think the dark races of the Congo need "saving." The only thing they need to be saved from is these people.
Quote 9
If God had amused himself inventing the lilies of the field, he surely knocked His own socks off with the African parasites. (1.10.37)
It's easy to forget that we're not the only creatures on this planet. There are millions of them that we can't even see. Does their size make them unimportant? Not to Adah—but definitely to Nathan.