How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
They alone had a sense of adventure and were flagrant in their enjoyment of the automobile’s plushness. Each had a window to herself and commanded an unobstructed view of the summer day flying past them. […] In the back seat, away from the notice of Macon and Ruth, they slipped off their patent leather pumps, rolled their stockings down over their knees, and watched the men walking down the streets. (1.2.31)
Lena and Corrie’s big excitement is sitting in the car and looking out the window. This is as close as they get to forging their own paths in the world (until Corrie breaks free). Here we see them push the envelope of Macon’s rules by stripping off the clothes that confine them, but shedding their propriety. Though they don’t actually explore, they command the scenery that passes by, like an explorer commanding an expedition.
Quote #2
When Reba was two years old, Pilate was seized with restlessness. It was as if her geography book had marked her to roam the country, planting her feet in each pink, yellow, blue or green state. She left the island and began the wandering life that she kept up for the next twenty-some-odd years, and stopped only after Reba had a baby. (1.5.148)
Pilate loves geography, and we have to imagine that throughout all of these travels, she meets a lot of people. And even if she is ostracized for her lack of bellybutton, she surely encounters the outcasts of society wherever she goes. In this light, it’s amazing that Pilate says in her final moments that she wishes she could have known more people. At this moment, we see her explorer self has never left, and that her reasons for exploring have to do with wanting to spread the love.
Quote #3
Throughout the fresh, if common, pursuit of knowledge, one conviction crowned her efforts: since death held no terrors for her (she spoke often to the dead), she knew there was nothing to fear. (1.5.149)
Pilate’s a good explorer because she laughs in the face of danger. She explores life in the same way that she explores herself.
Quote #4
Four graceful columns supported the portico, and the huge double door featured a heavy, brass knocker. He lifted it and let it fall; the sound was soaked up like a single raindrop in cotton. Nothing stirred. He looked back down the path and saw the green maw out of which he had come, a greenish-black tunnel, the end of which was nowhere in sight. (2.10.238)
Everything around Milkman at this moment is unfamiliar – what lies behind him and what lies ahead of him. He has never been in this situation before. At home, he knows every corner of Not Doctor Street and Southside, but here he is on his own.
Quote #5
He should have pulled a stick to check depth before he put his foot down, but his excitement had been too great. He went on, feeling with his toes for firm footing before he put his weight down. It was slow moving – the water was about two or three feet deep and some twelve yards wide. (2.10.249)
Milkman lets his excitement get in the way of his good sense. In his haste to get to the gold, he underestimates nature’s power and difficulty. He isn’t trying to learn the terrain or learn from the terrain, but is anxious just to use it in the service of getting him to the cave.
Quote #6
Milkman became agile, pulling himself up the rock face, digging his knees into crevices, searching with his fingers for solid earth patches or ledges of stone. He left off thinking and let his body do the work. (2.10.251)
FINALLY, Milkman gets the picture and learns to work with the landscape and not against it. Instead of focusing his mind on the gold, he is concerned with the process of getting there. He’s learning to be diligent.
Quote #7
It was the longest trek Milkman had ever made in his life. Miles, he thought; we must be covering miles. And hours; it must be two hours now since he whistled. On they walked, and Calvin never broke his stride for anything except and occasional shot and an occasional pause to listen to the sound that came back. (2.11.274)
Milkman is getting his butt kicked. He is in a situation so unlike anything he has ever experienced before and, as a result, we see him collapse under a tree, thinking about and finally understanding the people in his life: his father, his mother, his sisters, Hagar, Pilate, Guitar. The hunt teaches Milkman to see more clearly.
Quote #8
His watch and his two hundred dollars would be of no help out here, where all a man had was what he was born with, or had learned to use. And endurance. Eyes, ears, nose, taste, touch – and some other sense that he knew he did not have: an ability to separate out, of all the things there were to sense, the one that life itself might depend on. (2.11.277)
Material things like watches and money, vestiges of a capitalistic northern society, are unimportant and unnecessary here. Milkman learns instead how to rely upon his noggin and his own body, sharpening his senses along the way. He sees in those around him an awareness of the world, the likes of which he’s never seen.
Quote #9
What did Calvin see on that bark? On the ground? What was he saying? What did he hear that made him know something unexpected had happened some two miles – perhaps more – away, and that something was a different kind of prey, a bobcat? […] Little by little it fell into place. The dogs, the men – none was just hollering, just signaling location or pace. The men and the dogs were talking to each other. (2.11.277)
The Shalimar men are so in tune with their natural surroundings that they have developed their own language. It is that connectedness that really blows us away. Milkman has lived the life of a city boy individualist, pursuing his own gain, wants, and needs; the only sense of community he’s been exposed to has been that of the barbershop congregants. Yet, here he is presented with a whole other kind of community. And it’s a community that doesn’t rely on the structure of a society.
Quote #10
No, it was not language; it was what there was before language. Before things were written down. […] And if they could talk to animals, and the animals could talk to them, what didn’t they know about human beings? Or the earth itself, for that matter. It was more than tracks Calvin was looking for – he whispered to the trees, whispered to the ground, touched them, as a blind man caresses a page of Braille, pulling meaning through his fingers. (2.11.279)
Here we see a real explorer. Someone who is in complete harmony with the natural world, who is able to connect with all things: trees, humans, animals, earth, etc. All of Calvin’s senses are engaged, thus bringing to light his ability to comprehend, perceive, and understand both the location of a bobcat and also the fear in Milkman. This ability to communicate in a primal language makes the Shalimar men almost magical in their wisdom, and utterly connected to their own ancestors.