How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
We come to work, have lunch, and go home. We goose-step in and goose-step out, change our partners and wander all about, sashay around for a pat on the head, and promenade home till we all drop dead. (2.48)
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. Slocum describes his home-to-work routine in almost nursery rhyme style. The monotonous cycle contains little variation and it's all just a part of the lifestyle he lives.
Quote #2
Really, I ask myself every now and then, depending on how well or poorly things are going with Green at the office or at home with my wife, or with my retarded son, or with my other son, or my daughter, or the colored maid, or the nurse for my retarded son, is this all there is for me to do? Is this really the most I can get from the few years left in this one life of mine? (2.48)
"Yes" is the answer Slocum doesn't want to hear, but it's the only one he'll get. He really doesn't have many positive things to say about those who inhabit his home, and he seems to view them all as a burden and somewhat of a waste of time. Yet despite his misery, Slocum continues to come home to them each day, since it's much more complicated than he would think to just pack up and set sail for a new life.
Quote #3
I have an impulse often to strike back at the members of my family, even the children, when I feel they are insulting me or taking advantage. (3.96)
To exact revenge, Slocum waits for members of his family to make mistakes so that he can sit back and enjoy seeing them mess up.
Quote #4
I really don't think I have anything in common with Mommy anymore. And I don't think you have, either. I don't know why you still stay married to her. I know you're incompatible. (4.29)
Slocum's daughter makes biting comments like this about her home life with her parents, and then Slocum' wife gets angry with him when he kicks her out of his study. But is there some truth in what she is saying? Are Slocum's children voicing what their parents are too afraid to say?
Quote #5
I believe he pulls us together as a family and keeps us together. (I often think of leaving and always have. My daughter can't wait to get away, or says she can't.) I think we will fall apart as a family when he grows up and moves away. (4.67)
Slocum finds his son to be the glue that holds his family together and feels he would be at a total loss without him. And then it turns out—spoiler alert—that Slocum's son is even better glue for the family…when he's dead.
Quote #6
I begin to perceive what a stereotype I am only when I realize how often my daughter and my boy can predict and mimic my remarks with such verbatim precision. Have I really become so calculable a bore to them without my knowing it? (5.101)
Not only has Slocum's work-to-home routine become totally boring, but even what he says to his family has become predictable. The other members of the Slocum family are the only people who get to witness to his most scathing remarks.
Quote #7
In the family in which I live there are four people of whom I am afraid. Three of these four people are afraid of me, and each of these three is also afraid of the other two. Only one member of the family is not afraid of any of the others, and that one is an idiot. (5.219)
Slocum's home is much like his office: both are places where each person is afraid everyone else. Maybe only Derek is immune to the hatred, but that's because he has no idea what is going on (much less who and where he is, according to Slocum).
Quote #8
All of us live now—we are very well off—in luxury with him and his nurse in a gorgeous two-story wood colonial house with white shutters on a choice country acre in Connecticut off a winding, picturesque asphalt road called Peapod Lane—and I hate it. (6.2)
Talk about suburbia. What seems on the surface like the American Dream is something of a nightmare to Slocum. Why does he hate the sight of his own home? Maybe he recoils from the house itself because he believes it is as fake as the people in his own life.
Quote #9
I'll buy another house. My wife wants that. It will please my daughter, who is keenly sensitive to friends in families with more money and not mindful at all of those with less. (6.216)
Slocum's promotion will mean he can move to a bigger house, something he believes may make the members of his home more cheerful and happy. But as we soon come to find, they are more concerned about Slocum taking Jack Green's place than they are delighted by the financial perks that will come with such a promotion.
Quote #10
I felt more at home in the army than I did in my house. (I feel more at home in my office now than I do at home, and I don't feel at home there. I get along better with the people there.) I don't think I ever had a good time at home on a furlough. (6.271)
Slocum is afraid of everyone at home, but he also fears almost everyone at the office. Where does he truly fit in best? Can he even feel at home in the corners of his own mind?