How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
That propertied N***o who handled his business so well and who lived in the big house on Not Doctor Street had a sister who had a daughter but no husband, and that daughter had a daughter but no husband. (1.1.20)
We are exposed to the gossip mill, the way narratives are drawn around a family. The Dead’s house, though disconnected from the rest of Not Doctor Street due to the affluence it represents, is linked to Pilate’s house nonetheless. Oooh, Macon Dead must love that.
Quote #2
To lift the lion’s paw knocker, to entertain thoughts of marrying the doctor’s daughter was possible because each key represented a house which he owned at the time. Without those keys he would have floated away at the doctor’s first word: "Yes?" (1.1.22)
To the Dead family, a home is not a place where you live and dwell. A home to them is a symbol of what you own, a status indicator.
Quote #3
She opened the door and they followed her into a large sunny room that looked both barren and cluttered. A moss-green sack hung from the ceiling. Candles were stuck in bottles everywhere; newspaper articles and magazine pictures were nailed to the walls. But other than a rocking chair, two straight-backed chairs, a large table, a sink and a stove, there was no furniture. Pervading everything was the odor of pine and fermenting fruit. (1.2.39)
Pilate’s house is so cool. She doesn’t have much, but it’s a lot more welcoming than the Dead’s house, that’s for sure. We wonder what kind of newspaper articles and magazine pictures are on the walls, since we never get to see them. This place really does feel like a house out of a fairy tale. Pilate doesn’t clutter her home with anything she doesn’t need.
Quote #4
She had dumped the peelings in a large crock, which like most everything in the house had been made for some other purpose. Now she stood before the dry sink, pumping water into a blue-and-white wash basin which she used for a saucepan. (1.2.39)
Pilate knows how to use things, and not just to use them as they were intended to be used, but she can make an object multitask. Instead of buying more things to clutter her house, she is very Zen and minimalist.
Quote #5
"…because the fact is that I am a small woman. I don’t mean little; I mean small, and I’m small because I was pressed small. I lived in a great big house that pressed me into a small package." (1.5.124)
Ruth’s spirit was crushed by the walls that held her in, by the affluence that surrounded her. She was never exposed to the outside world. Is this her fault? Can we blame her for her smallness? We sure wish we could have known what Ruth was like as a little girl, if she was ever presented with the opportunity to leave the sheltered-ness of her dad’s house.
Quote #6
Maybe it’s you I should be killing. Maybe then he will come to me and let me come to him. He is my home in this world. And then, aloud, "He is my home in this world."
"And I am his," said Ruth. (1.5.137)
Hagar and Pilate seem to think it’s possible for a human being to be your home. A home is a place where you sleep and eat and hang up pictures on the wall. A home is also sometimes a place where you watch Grey’s Anatomy on Thursday night in your slippers while eating Doritos. How can Milkman be that place? Ruth and Hagar seem to interpret a home as a place of refuge. Milkman, a place of refuge? Really?
Quote #7
Sixteen years later he had one of the best farms in Montour County. A farm that colored their lives like a paintbrush and spoke to them like a sermon. "You see?" the farm said to them. "See? See what you can do? Never mind you can’t tell one letter from another, never mind you born a slave, never mind you lose your name, never mind your daddy dead, never mind nothing. Here, this here, is what a man can do if he puts his mind to it and his back into it. Stop sniveling," it said. "Stop picking around the edges of the world. Take advantage, and if you can’t take advantage, take disadvantage. We live here. On this planet, in this nation, in this country right here. Nowhere else! We got a home in this rock, don’t you see! Nobody starving in my home; nobody crying in my home, and if I got a home you got one too! Grab it! Grab this land! (2.10.235)
Lincoln’s Heaven is like the coolest version of a home that we see in Song, and it is cool because it grows things, it is the product of sixteen years of hard work, it is creative, it is constantly producing deliciousness, and it has a fish pond. There is no place else like it in the world of this novel. It is a paradise. It is named after the American president who ended slavery, and seems to embody the ideals that that president believed in. Racism kills this version of a home, and, therefore, kills that president’s ideals. As depressing as that sounds, Lincoln’s Heaven is a source of inspiration for many people in Danville and beyond.
Quote #8
Without knowing who killed their father, they instinctively hated the murderer’s house. And it did look like a murderer’s house. Dark, ruined, evil. Never, not since he knelt by his window still wishing he could fly, had he felt so lonely. (2.10.238)
Man, big mansions in this novel are always so evil and diseased, and their inhabitants are kind of unhappy. We’d take a Lincoln’s Heaven dwelling over this cold bastion of wealth any day of the week.
Quote #9
"They loved this place. Loved it. Brought pink veined marble from across the sea for it and hired men in Italy to do the chandelier that I had to climb a ladder and clean with white muslin every two months. They loved it. Stole for it, lied for it, killed for it. But I’m the one left. Me and the dogs. And I will never clean it again. […] Everything in this world they lived for will crumble and rot." (2.10.247)
The Butlers represent the greed, materialism, and racism that afflicted many white Americans. But this greed, materialism, and racism do not get them very far. Their goal and desire is to amass wealth and to live well, but by focusing so heavily on "things," they forget that these "things" are impermanent and subject to decay, just like them. These "things" don’t last like the mythology of Solomon and Ryna do, for example.
Quote #10
The Byrd house sat on a neat lawn separated by a white picket fence from the field grass on either side of the property. A child’s swing dangled from a cedar tree; four little steps painted blue led up to the porch, and from the window, between fluttering curtains, came the smell of gingerbread baking. (2.12.287)
In the heart of the Blue Ridge wilderness is this strange piece of organized, ordered, and manicured land. It’s like that old lady’s house in "The Snow Queen" (a fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson) where summer lives perpetually. The creepy old lady tries to keep the little girl with her forever. Or like in Hansel and Gretel when they come across the witch’s candy house of deliciousness, only to find that the witch wants to eat them. Creepiness seems to follow order and sweetness in this novel. Remember how Guitar can’t eat candy without throwing up? When Milkman returns to Susan Byrd’s house, it’s not as peaceful-looking. In fact, it looks plain "seedy." Homes are deceptive creatures in the world of Song.