How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
David says "Bloody fascist pig Yanks," as though he's commenting on the weather. (1.11)
David is fond of railing against the "Yanks"—Americans, that is—but his precise political commitments and his objections to Americans never really become clear. Given that David emerges as an egomaniacal bully, it seems like his xenophobia is more about hearing the sound of his own voice than anything else.
Quote #2
Now we're on my home ground, foreign territory. My throat constricts, as it learned to do when I discovered people could say words that would go into my ears meaning nothing. (1.20)
The narrator feels pretty awkward and foreign going back to the region where as grew up, as she's forced to try to communicate with some of the French-speaking residents. Apparently she's always felt fairly awkward about it.
Quote #3
Madame has appeared in the kitchen doorway and Paul speaks with her in the nasal slanted French I can't interpret because I learned all but a few early words of mine in school. Folk songs and Christmas carols and, from the later grades, memorized passages of Racine and Baudelaire are no help to me here. (2.19)
The narrator learned French in school, so her use of the language is very different from that of the Francophone individuals she encounters. As a result, she feels super-self-conscious about communicating in French with people like Madame, an old family friend who is Francophone.
Quote #4
Neither knew more than five words of the other's language and after the opening Bonjours both would unconsciously raise their voices as though talking to a deaf person. (2.24)
Here the narrator is describing her mother's struggles to communicate with Madame (and vice versa). Apparently, they would resort to screaming at each other to try to make themselves understood. It's quite an image.
Quote #5
"Avez-vous du viande hâché?" I ask her, blushing because of my accent. She grins then and the two men grin also, not at me but at each other. I see I've made a mistake, I should have pretended to be an American. "Amburger, oh yes we have lots. How much?" she asks, adding the final H carelessly to show she can if she feels like it. This is border country. (3.4-6)
When she goes into a shop to get some food for the group, the narrator ends up feeling super-embarrassed about communicating with the shopkeeper in French. Apparently her accent marks her off as so different that she believes it would have been better just to pretend to be American.
Quote #6
"Reel in," I say to David. There's no sense in staying here now. If they catch one they'll be here all night, if they don't get anything in fifteen minutes they'll blast off and scream around the lake in their souped-up boat, deafening the fish. They're the kind who catch more than they can eat and they'd do it with dynamite if they could get away with it. (7.50)
While they're out fishing, they encounter some Americans. Apparently their arrival ruins the expedition for the narrator for the reasons she outlines inwardly (it's unclear if she relays any of this thinking to David). Man, Americans really have a bad rep in this neck of the woods.
Quote #7
"It wouldn't be a bad country if only we could kick out the f***ing pig Americans, eh? Then we could have some peace." (10.43)
David is back to railing against the Americans, but once again he (unlike the narrator) doesn't really provide any justification or explanation for his disdain.
Quote #8
"We're not from the States," I said, annoyed that he'd mistaken me for one of them. "No kidding?" His face lit up, he'd seen a real native. "You from here?" "Yes," I said. "We all are." "So are we," said the back one unexpectedly. (15.24-27)
The narrator and her friends discover that some "Americans" they've encountered are actually Canadians—and this other group had made the same mistake, thinking the narrator and her buddies were American. Jeez, why is everyone here so paranoid about foreignness?
Quote #9
But they'd killed the heron anyway. It doesn't matter what country they're from, my head said, they're still Americans, they're what's in store for us, what we are turning into. They spread themselves like a virus, they get into the brain and take over the cells and the cells change from inside and the ones that have the disease can't tell the difference. (15.32)
Despite the discovery that the "Americans" were actually Canadian, the narrator keeps calling them American for the rest of the novel because, in her view, their behavior (in killing the heron) warrants that title. She admits that this "Americanness" is spreading, saying that the Americans are what "we are turning into." Perhaps that's why they were mistaken for non-Canadians?
Quote #10
I had to concentrate in order to talk to him, the English words seemed imported, foreign; it was like trying to listen to two separate conversations, each interrupting the other. (18.14)
Toward the end of the novel, after the narrator's epiphany in the lake, she starts feeling foreign to basically everything human, drifting away from "civilized" things like language and more toward the animalistic.