How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Paul started calling the therapy group the "Madman Underground," and everyone else picked it up. The name stuck like a coat of paint, at least inside the group. And supposedly nobody outside the group knew there was a group. Of course we all knew that wasn't true. High school was like the little clear plastic tunnels that Paul's hamsters lived in: you could run a long way, but never get out, and always, everyone could see you. (1.79)
Being a social outcast in high school under normal circumstances is pretty bad. Being a social outcast who is also known to be part of a therapy group for weirdos and head cases is a fate you probably wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. Or, maybe you would. If so, you're pretty hardcore. Either way, the Madmen have to live double lives individually as well as a group. Once every other week, they come together in their Madmen union and share their dirt, but the rest of the time, they play like they don't know each other.
Quote #2
Cheryl was the queen of the socials—all the cute perky girls with big smiles that knew everybody. She was the secretary or vice president for every club and committee, always at every party, and never missed a game […] But even though she was Queen of the Socials, Cheryl was even more the Queen of the Madman Underground. (3.3)
Some of the Madmen—Cheryl, most obviously—are able to pull off the incredible feat of being both nuts and popular at the same time. Which really just makes us think that Cheryl's life has to be really exhausting. Popular cheerleader by day, protector of her molested, traumatized sister by night? Dude, that's a lot to take on.
Quote #3
The next Madman in was Danny, in his FFA jacket. Paul always said that he probably slept in it and you couldn't prove he didn't have it on under his football uniform. He was a one-man two-clique wonder, leader of jocks and farm boys alike. Three-clique, really, the smart kids let him hang with them to show they could be tolerant. Four, I guess, if you counted the Madman Underground. (3.16)
Like Cheryl, Danny is one of those kids who's been blessed with social-chameleon abilities. Despite his inclusion in the Madman Underground, his athletic prowess and zeal for Future Farmers of America seem to be enough to earn him status as a Popular Guy.
Quote #4
That was annoying. Us Madmen didn't associate with each other in public. We didn't need some dumbass football player or one of the jackoff smart kids to come up to us and make bibby-bibby noises with his finger and lip. (3.44)
So, basically, the context for this passage is that Gratz likes to embarrass the Madmen by calling them out at the end of class, like, every single day, which totally blows their cover of pretending not to know each other outside of therapy. By the way, isn't it kind of hypocritical for them to get all up on Karl for wanting to ditch the group when they all ignore each other all the time? Double standard, much?
Quote #5
Bonny was a cheerleader because she did anything that would look good on those college apps—cheerleader, choir solos, Service Club, plus all the science clubs, math team, and chess team, but she wasn't much of a conformist. Today she was looking sort of like Grace Slick or Janis Joplin after a three-year famine. (3.63)
Dang, what is it with all of these Madmen girls managing to land spots on the cheerleading squad? There's something kind of twisted about that when you think about it—Cheryl's and Bonny's lives outside school are pretty dismal, and yet they dress up in little skirts once a week and yell "go team go" while smiling real big. Maybe they're involved with so much stuff because they're trying to convince people they're normal, too.
Quote #6
I guess I could have told Coach Stuckey, but I didn't want to be a nark and a crybaby. I'd have to go away to the State Home for Terminal Pussies with a big P tattooed on my forehead. Besides, who the hell were they going to believe, the popular QB or skinny little Shoemaker whose dad used to be mayor before being the town drunk? Al's dad, who was at every game cheering like a nut, or a spooky ghost like my dad, a dying bundle of sticks and scraggly hair? I knew where I was on the ladder. And where Al was. (4.17-18)
Apparently, being the ex-mayor's kid doesn't score you enough points to earn a solid place on the high school social ladder—especially when that ex-mayor is a drunk and dying. The fact that Karl gets up the guts to take the situation with Al into his own hands is remarkable enough in itself.
Quote #7
"Well, then." She drew a deep breath. "If I don't go—or if I do go—will I get social leprosy?"
"Depends on who you want it with. If you do go you get social leprosy with the drama types, the school paper, the Poetry Club, and both the serious intellectuals […]
On the other hand, if you don't go to the First Day Dance, you get social leprosy with the socials, the jocks, the Glee Club fairies, the hoods'n'sluts, and all the clubs that begin with F." (5.65-66, 68)
Dude, Lightsburg High has more cliques than the school in Mean Girls. Their names are definitely more creative, and there are legitimate threats of social leprosy in relation to going to school dances. That's pretty serious.
Quote #8
In one of the dozen or so inhabited houses that huddled around one side street, an old lady named Rose Carson had a sofa that needed re-covered. Browning had gone to high school with her; that was where he got a lot of his business, people he'd known in school. I figured that was probably how he'd gotten his big break, when he re-covered Moses's living room set. (10.50)
Newsflash—they had cliques roughly a million years ago, too … or at least when Browning was a teenager back in the Dark Ages.
Quote #9
"Karl, you're such a baby. Grow up. It's a therapy group, okay? A therapy group. Where they put weird loser kids. We don't have some kind of mystical magical Madman mystique. It's not the club where all the geeks get to be special. What it is, is where f***ed-up kids go." (15.93)
We know Paul is trying to run his own version of Operation Be Normal, but there's something in this passage that tells us he's trying to convince himself of all this more than he's trying to convince Karl. Remember, Paul doesn't really want to leave the Madmen—which means he probably needs to preach to himself about it even more.
Quote #10
"I understand how much you just want a year of things being the way they're supposed to be. S***, when I get home the first thing I do is make sure my grandpa's not in my sister's bed, or she's not curled up someplace crying. And I'm a cheerleader, and popular, and all that crap. I feel like, god, I should only be worrying about cute boys, and what to wear, and college applications." (18.38)
We've already speculated about how life must be downright exhausting for Cheryl, and here's the proof: On the outside, she's popular, pretty, and normal, but the truth is, there are probably very few people outside the Madman Underground who know the truth about what's going on at home. Kind of makes you want to be a little less hard on the cheerleaders—after all, you don't know what they're facing when they leave school.