How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Will it really be mine—this mountain?
Daddy says it will one day. He loved the mountain, its long, lingering dawns.
But he frowned, squinting off at the hills with night still huddled in their folds. Now it won't ever be mine. (1.8-10)
Is the mountain M.C.'s? If Daddy says so, then of course it is, right? Not that M.C. is wrong or anything, but his thought process kind of shows how young he is (which makes sense, since it's the beginning of the book). He still looks to his father as the authority figure in the family, and whatever he says, goes.
Quote #2
And now M.C. knew how he could get around his daddy and get his mama and his brothers and sister off the dangerous mountain. The idea had come to him after he heard about the Dude. (1.21)
This is right at the beginning of the book, and already we get the idea that M.C. feels responsible for the entire family. Why else would he even be racking his brain for a way to get off their mountain?
Quote #3
"Grandaddy came here in his mama's, Sarah's, arms," Jones said quietly. "She wasn't free yet. The war wasn't started but it was coming. Only Sarah couldn't wait. I expect she ran until she found a place big enough to free her troubles. Just the clothes on her back, that half-dead child and the song she sang to him, my granddaddy. He grew up and sang it to my daddy. And he to me." (4.58)
Jones is explaining to M.C. about the time right before the Civil War, when Great Grandmother Sarah escaped to the mountain and started the Higgins clan there. He's also explaining to M.C. the history behind a family song he's just sung to M.C. So it's not just land that gets passed down from father to son—it's music, too. Kind of unexpected of Jones, if you think about how Banina is the musical one in the family.