How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Although Vicksburg was just a handful of chips from the woodpile and the River a trench scraped into the packed earth with the point of a hoe, it (river, city, and terrain) lived, possessing even in miniature that ponderable though passive recalcitrance of topography which outweighs artillery, against which the most brilliant of victories and the most tragic of defeats are but the loud noises of a moment. (1.1.1)
Ever build a sandcastle or a little town in the dirt of your playground or backyard? If it was in the US in the last 100 years or so, it probably wasn't representative of the current battle raging in your region. Bayard and Ringo are just kids, playing like kids do, but the war affects them so deeply that it even finds its way into their games.
Quote #2
"All right!" I cried. "I'll be Grant this time, then. You can be General Pemberton." (1.1.21)
Bayard and Ringo act out the war that's being waged in the country, and instead of playing Batman and Spidey, they take on the personas of important generals. Nobody wants to be Ulysses S. Grant, an important Union general, but Bayard lets Ringo be local hero General John Pemberton to be nice.
Quote #3
But we were just twelve; we didn't listen to that. What Ringo and I heard was the cannon and the flags and the anonymous yelling. (1.2.5)
For twelve-year-olds, "war is hell" doesn't really mean anything yet. Even though their loved ones are in mortal danger off fighting Yankees, they just want to hear about all of the explosions and mayhem. (There were no Transformers movies in those days…)
Quote #4
"Vicksburg fell? Do he mean hit fell off in the River? With Ginrul Pemberton in hit too?" (1.2.15)
Cities fall, populations rise up and revolt, and all sorts of other weird vocabulary contortions happen in war. Ringo doesn't understand that when Vicksburg fell, it passed from Confederate to Union control. He takes it literally and thinks that it must have fallen in the river.
Quote #5
"Dont you know that if They captured you and this boy, They could almost force him to come in and surrender?" (2.2.46)
People become pawns in the giant chess game of war. The officer advising Granny to go on home believes that if she and Bayard are captured, they could be used as a playing piece to trade for John Sartoris' life. Also, check out the capital T on "They"… the enemy is powerful enough to get special grammatical treatment.
Quote #6
"The Yankees have already been here." Then we saw it too: a burned house like ours; three chimneys standing above a mound of ashes and then we saw a white woman and a child looking at us from a cabin behind them. (3.1.31)
The Yankees became a fierce and fearsome enemy toward the end of the Civil War, with a scorched earth policy that left literally everything smoldering in their path.
Quote #7
But this time what I saw was something that looked like piles of black straws heaped up every few yards and we ran into the cut and we could see where they had dug the ties up and piled them and set them on fire. (3.2.9)
The railroad was, for the boys, a symbol of progress, modernity, and wonder. Bayard had already seen the working railroad at his last visit to his cousins' house, and Ringo couldn't wait to see it for himself. That makes it all the sadder that when they get there it's torn to bits.
Quote #8
But Gavin was killed at Shiloh and so they didn't marry. (3.2.14)
It's a short sentence, but it really packs a punch. Dru's fiancé, the good-looking Gavin, died fighting for the Confederacy at the Battle of Shiloh, along with about 23,000 others from both sides, in one of the bloodiest battles of American history.
Quote #9
"Phut," Ringo said, "these folks is too busy keeping us conquered to recognise no little ten or twelve head of stock." (4.1.27)
As anyone who watches US foreign policy knows, "winning" the war is only half the, ahem, battle. It's keeping it won that's the real trouble, as Ringo points out. The Union might have declared victory over the Confederate secessionists, but they still have many years of work ahead of them "keeping them conquered."
Quote #10
It was just a lieutenant; by this time Ringo and I could tell the different officers' ranks better than we could tell Confederate ranks because one day we counted up and the only Confederate officers we had ever seen were Father and the captain that talked to us with Uncle Buck McCaslin that day in Jefferson before Grant burned it. (4.3.1)
Ringo and Bayard are definitely Southerners, living in Mississippi and rooting for the Confederacy. But the fact that they are more familiar with the Union officers' ranks just goes to show how much of a whooping the Union has given the South: there are more of them around because they are winning.