How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Title.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"You're to stay home and help me boil tomorrow. Your sisters, too."
"Pa, I can't. I'll fall behind if I miss a day, and my examinations are coming up."
"Cows can't eat learning, Mattie. I need to buy hay. Used up most everything I cut last fall. Fred Becker don't take credit, so I'll need to sell some syrup to get it." I started to argue, but Pa looked up from his bowl and I knew to stop. (2.fractious.104-107)
Very early in the novel, Mattie must reconcile her hopes and dreams of an education with her father's expectations for her and his desire to see his farm succeed so that he can take care of his family. Duty versus dream comes up time and again, and in this case, duty wins.
Quote #2
She raised chickens, too. Scores of them. During the warmer months, she fried up four or five every evening, and baked biscuits and pies, too, and took it all down to the Eagle Bay railroad station the next day in her cart to meet the trains. Between the engineer and the conductors and all the hungry tourists, she sold everything she made. She put every penny she earned in an old cigar box that she kept under her bed. Weaver's mamma worked as hard as she did so she could send Weaver away to college. To the Columbia University in New York City. Miss Wilcox, our teacher, encouraged him to apply. He'd been granted a scholarship and planned to study history and politics and then go on to law school one day. He was the first freeborn boy in his family. His grandparents were slaves, and even his parents were born slaves, though Mr. Lincoln freed them when they were tiny children. (3.abecedarian.53)
It's clear through Weaver's backstory that his dreams are not just his own; they are the realization of dreams of his parents and his grandfather. And it's important to remember that sometimes a person's dreams and hopes don't just belong to that person; they are symbolic of something more. In Weaver's case, his dream of going to college is a physical representation of racial equality and a rejection of the inequalities that generations of his family has experienced.
Quote #3
"God took her life and she took yours."
"You shut up, Weaver! You don't know anything about it!" I shouted, the tears spilling. (3.abecedarian.83-84)
Weaver knows the promise that Mattie made to her mother, and he thinks that the death of Mattie's dream is really the death of the life she really wants. He's right, but Mattie hasn't reached the point where she's ready to admit this to herself—she's still grieving for her mother.