How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Don Joaquin, with a hatchet tied edge out and upright to his hand, was made by the negroes to appear on the bulwarks; whereupon, seen with arms in his hands and in a questionable attitude, he was shot for a renegade seamen. (3.412)
Getting the wrong version of reality is deadly. The Americans shot many of the Spanish sailors, through ignorance and confusion. Which calls into question the version of reality in which the Americans are heroic saviors. They seem more like vicious racist thugs, who don't care who they kill.
Quote #8
"Are you so horribly ignorant, then," he cried, "as not to know that by far the most dangerous part of a house, during such a terrific tempest as this, is the fire-place?" (4.13)
The Lightning-rod salesman has a whole host of pseudo-scientific factoids with which he tries to convince the narrator to purchase a lightning rod. Marketing is a world of its own.
Quote #9
I know not whether I am not the occasional victim of optical delusion concerning the Gallipagos…as I have seemed to see, slowly emerging from those imagined solitudes, and heavily crawling along the floor, the ghost of a gigantic tortoise, with "Memento****" burning in live letters upon his back. (5.18)
The asterixes here stand in for Mori, so the whole thing burned into the giant tortoises back is "Memento Mori", which is a Latin phrase referring to the vanity of earthly life. This dream vision is basically of a giant tortoise of death. The Galapagos becomes a kind of barren afterlife haunted by giant tortoises—which Shmoop thinks is supposed to be grim and impressive, but is actually a version of reality which gives Shmoop the giggles.