How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Rex Minton said we better not go to the Congo on account of the cannibal natives would boil us in a pot and eat us up. (1.2.6)
Rex Minton is probably about five years old, but most American adults at this time have similarly enlightened opinions of the Congo and its people. (Cannibals, no: deadly snakes and goiters, yes.)
Quote #2
Bosoms may wave in the breeze, mind you, but legs must be strictly hidden, top secret. (1.6.2)
Rachel's a child of the 1960s, so she doesn't remember a time when American women also had to keep their legs hidden from view. The bosoms, however, well... Let's be practical. Maybe with all the children the villagers have needing to be fed, it makes more sense to just let them run free. (The bosoms and the children.)
Quote #3
Every few years, even now, I catch the scent of Africa. [...] Ripe fruits, acrid sweat, urine, flowers, dark spices. (2.Prologue.1, 2.Prologue.3)
The scent of Africa is a piquant blend, much likes its jungles, of the beauty of nature and the less-than-glamorous realities of human life. (We all sweat and pee. Even Bradley Cooper.)
Quote #4
"Secretly, most [Congolese] believe white people know how to turn the sun on and off and make the river flow backward. [...] They think you represent a greedy nation." (3.15.13, 3.15.15)
The Congolese view of whites is about as backwards as whites' view of the Congolese. Why do the Congolese hold whites up to these god-like standards? Perhaps it's because the whites march into the Congo pretty much acting like they can do these things.
Quote #5
"What is the purpose of so many automobiles at the same time? [...] Why is nobody walking?" (3.15.45, 3.15.47)
Um, we ask ourselves this question all. the. time.—especially when we're stuck on the 405. So, yep, we think Anatole makes a good point here. Everyone in America needs a car because things are so spread apart, but things are so spread apart because everyone has a car. It's a chicken/egg conundrum, and there may be no way to solve it.
Quote #6
I wanted to live under the safe protection of somebody who wore decent clothes, bought meat from the grocery store like the Good Lord intended, and cared about others. (4.5.5)
Oh, Rachel. We must not have been reading very carefully, because we don't remember there being any supermarkets in the Bible. Rachel falls into the category of people who think America is blessed by God and everyone should and wants to live that way.
Quote #7
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 #8
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 #9
I've heard foreign visitors complain that the Congolese are greedy, naive, and inefficient. They have no idea. The Congolese are skilled at survival and perceptive beyond belief or else dead at an early age. (5.8.42)
The "foreign visitors" Leah mentions are likely other white people who are unaccustomed to the ways of life in the Congo. The Congolese aren't trying to take advantage of other people; they're merely trying to survive.
Quote #10
Most of America is perfectly devoid of smells. [...]Even in the grocery store, surrounded in one aisle by more kinds of food than will ever be known in a Congolese lifetime, there was nothing on the air but a vague, disinfected emptiness. (5.10.8)
Um, we take from this that Leah has never been walking through NYC in the middle of August. Once again, the sense of smell conjures up powerful memories of Africa. Or, in this case, its absence is representative of America, a country which, to Leah, seems to have been dunked in hand sanitizer and left out to dry.