How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"Hush your mouth, nigger!" she cried, in that tense desperate voice. "Come on here and get em some wood!" (1.1.15)
This tone makes us cringe, with its bossiness and racial slur. What makes us cringe even more is the fact that it is a slave talking to another slave! The idea that some people should be treated like work animals was so deeply ingrained that it seems natural even for Philadelphy to speak to Loosh that way.
Quote #2
The sun had gone out of the bottom when we finished the fence, that is, left Joby and Loosh with the last three panels to put up.... (1.2.2)
Interesting use of the pronoun "we", eh? Bayard says that "we" finished the fence, but what he really means is that he, his dad, and Ringo left Joby and Loosh, the grown male slaves, to do the work. No matter, though; it is still considered "our" work, because the slaves are the possessions of the owner.
Quote #3
[Joby] had been Father's body servant all the time that he was raising and training Simon, Ringo's father, to take over when he (Joby) got too old, which was to have been some years yet except for the War. So Simon went with Father; he was still in Tennessee with the army. (1.2.6)
Slaves might have been considered and treated like possessions, but the fact is that they get old just like any human being. That's why one generation of slaves would have to train the next so that the owners could enjoy uninterrupted service. The war disrupted this process not only by ending slavery, but also by taking some slaves away from the plantations to fight.
Quote #4
"I dreamed I was looking out my window and a man walked into the orchard and went to where it is and stood there pointing at it," Granny said. She looked at Louvinia. "A black man." (2.1.16)
It's kind of strange to imagine sharing your life with a group of people whom you deeply mistrust. Granny's dream reveals how she relies on the slaves to do all the work, but also realizes that their indispensability makes them a little bit dangerous—they know where all the silver's buried. Maybe she should have treated them a little better…
Quote #5
[Joby] and Granny were like that; they were like a man and a mare, a blooded mare, which takes just exactly so much from the man and the man knows the mare will take just so much and the man knows that when that point is reached, just what is going to happen. Then it does happen: the mare kicks him, not viciously but just enough, and the man knows it was going to happen and so he is glad then, it is over then.... (2.2.8)
We guess it's not entirely clear, but it does seem like Joby would be the man and Granny the mare. At first that seems kind of strange, because Granny is the master and Joby the slave. However, as we can see, the mare is really the one in charge because she can kick the man.
Quote #6
They lived in a two-room log house with about a dozen dogs, and they kept their n*****s in the manor house. It didn't have any windows now and a child with a hairpin could unlock any lock in it, but every night when the n*****s came up from the fields Uncle Buck or Uncle Buddy would drive them into the house and lock the door with a key almost as big as a horse pistol; probably they would still be locking the front door long after the last n***** had escaped.... (2.2.14)
What a crazy ritual! Every night Uncle Buck and Uncle Buddy lock up their slaves, knowing full well that they're just going to go out the back door. They must be doing it for show, maybe to remind the slaves that they're in charge; however, the fact that they let them get out the back door also means that they share some of the control.
Quote #7
We lived in Joby's cabin then, with a red quilt nailed by one edge to a rafter and hanging down to make two rooms. (3.1.10)
After the big, beautiful house burns down on the plantation, everybody has to move into the slaves' cabins. Of course, Joby is used to having a rustic little cabin with a blanket for a wall, but the Sartoris family sees it as a huge hardship when they have to live that way.
Quote #8
"You tell them n*****s to send Loosh to you and you tell him to get that chest and them mules and then you whup him!" (3.1.18)
Here goes Louvinia again, acting like she herself isn't a slave. She is angry that the Union soldiers have taken Loosh, the silver, and the mules, and tells Granny to go get all of it back. Maybe she is afraid of change, or maybe she thinks that life would be worse where she isn't the top slave, but she's part of keeping the racial order the way it is.
Quote #9
It was as if…the railroad, the rushing locomotive which [Ringo] hoped to see symbolized it—the motion, the impulse to move which had already seethed to a head among his people, darker than themselves, reasonless, following and seeking a delusion, a dream, a bright shape which they could not know since there was nothing in their heritage, nothing in the memory even of the old men to tell the others, "This is what we will find".... (3.1.26)
The desire for freedom, even for people who have not known freedom in many, many generations, is compared to the railroad in this passage. The train is unstoppable, strong, and fast, just like the need to break free from slavery that the many people headed north feel.
Quote #10
They were coming up the road. It sounded like about fifty of them; we could hear the feet hurrying, and a kind of panting murmur. It was not singing exactly, it was not that loud; it was just a sound, a breathing, a kind of gasping murmuring chant and the feet whispering fast in the deep dust. I could hear women too and then all of a sudden I began to smell them. "N*****s," I whispered. (3.1.33)
Phew. This is a tough one, but it's important. Bayard Sartoris has grown up seeing slavery as a natural state of being. He recognizes the escaping slaves by their smell, which is a terribly sad thing. It makes us realize how access to soap, water, and doctors was limited for the slaves and made them live like animals. Not easy to stomach, but it tells us a bunch about that time.