How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
We walk away from her if we can, or turn our backs and try not to notice. We each hope somebody else will do or say something to make her stop smiling and chatting to herself each time she starts (2.14).
The company does not know how to handle Martha, the typist who is slowly going crazy. They feel she would be surprised and embarrassed if she knew what she was doing—and if she knew that she was probably going mad. While everyone wishes that she would go away, nobody has the chutzpah to say anything to her—it's a classic case of the bystander effect.
Quote #2
"You must understand, Bob," he bantered (while I thought he might actually throw an arm around my shoulder. He never touches me), "that this ambition of yours to make a little speech is nothing more than a shallow, middle-class vanity. I'm as shallow as you are, and as middle class as the best of them. So I'm going to take your three minutes away from you and cover you and your department in my own speech."
You bastard, I thought. "You're the boss," I said. (2.68-69)
Slocum never quite expresses to his boss Green how badly he desires to make his speech, and Green never quite expresses his desire to crush Slocum's hopes and dreams. Both hide behind cordiality. Also notice the discrepancy between what Slocum thinks and what he actually says to Green.
Quote #3
I believe she is telling the truth, for I don't think my wife has learned how to lie to me yet. (My wife doesn't know how to flirt and doesn't know how to lie to me.) When she does have something she hopes to conceal, she remains silent about it and hopes I will not inquire. (If I ask, she will always tell me. She doesn't like to lie.) (3.79)
Slocum may lie to his wife, but he knows she will never lie to him. He also suspects that she knows a great deal more about him than she cares to disclose. Is he right? Does he actually know his wife as well as he thinks he does?
Quote #4
Our conversations are largely about nothing, and frequently restrained. (3.79)
At the dinner table and even in their bedroom, Slocum and his wife usually just hash out the same things: Derek, the kids, work, their routine unhappiness, and their dissatisfaction with each other—but never in any depth. How exciting.
Quote #5
So I am silent with Martha, and I am silent with my wife, out of the same coarse mixture of sympathy and self-interest, about her drinking and flirting and dirty words, as I was silent also with my mother when she had the first of her brain strokes, and am silent also with everyone else I know in whom I begin to perceive the first signs of irreversible physical decay and approaching infirmity and death. (3.85)
Slocum doesn't say anything to anybody about anything bad if he feels it's already too late to help. For instance, he said nothing to his mother about her brain stroke, and he says nothing to his wife about how he truly feels.
Quote #6
"Let's try not to fight tonight. Let's see if we can't get through just one meal without anybody yelling and screaming and getting angry. That shouldn't be too hard, should it?" (3.94)
Slocum's wife comes to expect dinner arguments as the norm, and she pleads with the family not to heat things up tonight. She is, unfortunately, not successful in her request. It's another failure of communication on top of all the others.
Quote #7
I do such things to them, I know, even when I don't intend to. But I cannot admit this to my wife or children. My wife would not understand. I cannot really say to my wife: "I'm sorry." She would think I was apologizing. My wife and I cannot really talk to each other about the same things anymore; but I sometimes forget this and try. We are no longer close enough for honest conversation (although we are close enough for frequent sexual intercourse). (3.107)
The members of the Slocum family say and think different things. What's holding them back from speaking what's truly on their minds? Wouldn't things just be so much easier if people were more honest with each other?
Quote #8
My error, I think, is that I always speak to her as I would to a grown-up; and all she wants, probably, is for me to talk to her as a child. (4.6)
Slocum is unable to communicate effectively with his daughter. In fact, when he speaks to her sometimes, he feels his comments come from a dark corner of his soul he doesn't tap into often. How can he tell his daughter that she is the most marvelous teenage girl in the world when he believes there are others who clearly outshine her? He also feels their roles are reversed, with him as the child and her as the adult. Does Slocum truly depend on her?
Quote #9
We have brisk, Socratic dialogues, he and I, on just about everything (the lines fly crisply in rhythmic questions and answers), and we both enjoy them. (With my daughter, I have arguments and demoralizing discussions that tend to become overladen with personal imputations and denials, even when she starts out discussing, objectively and dispassionately, life and its meaning or her friends or mine. She has many comments to make about the people my wife and I know, as though they were any of her business.) I am Socrates, he is the pupil. (Or so it seems, until I review some of our conversations when I am alone, and then it often seems that he is Socrates. (5.104)
Such a difference in communication between father and son, and father and daughter. Slocum feels more at ease when he is speaking with his son, and the two can engage in highly intellectual conversations. When he has a conversation with his daughter, it always ends with someone feeling upset.
Quote #10
All my life, it seems, I've been sandwiched between people who will not speak. My mother couldn't speak at the end. My youngest child Derek couldn't speak from the beginning. My sister and I almost never speak. (We exchange greeting cards.) I don't speak to cousins. (Imay never speak. In dreams I often have trouble speaking.) (5.216)
The inability to speak appears as a frequent theme in the novel. In the case of his old mother, and now with Derek, either sickness or disability has prohibited communication. Things are slightly different with the other members of the Slocum household, since even though no health reason prevents Slocum from speaking with them, they are still unable to effectively communicate.