How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
And that year I had the additional good feeling of knowing that if life in Salem were ever to be good again, I had had a part in making it so.
But side by side with that thought was the guilt I felt at realizing that people might be alive if I had spoken out sooner. I could not enjoy one feeling without suffering the other. And so, when the witch madness ended, finally, like everyone else in Salem I was left with self recriminations, which stay with me always. (23.75-76)
The Salem witch trials are almost over and part of Susanna is stoked… but then there's that nagging part of her that's bummed and ashamed, too. She says she has "recriminations" (a.k.a. blame) toward herself, so we know that she definitely feels guilty. Do you think things would actually have turned out differently if she'd spoken up sooner?
Quote #8
Mulling over the whole matter as I sit in church waiting for Ann Putnam to appear, I mind how painful it is to recollect the events of those days. But once we allow memory to open its floodgates, we are hard put to stop its flow. (Epilogue.1)
Looks like Susanna is at the mercy of memory these days, and whether or not she wants to remember Ann and all the kerfuffles she caused, Susanna just can't help herself. Though a good deal of the remembering is hard, at least she's got her mom in the memory mix too.
Quote #9
"Do you recollect that day we stood on the wharf in Salem Harbor when William came home?"
He scowls at me. Then he smiles. "You mean the name on the schooner?""Yes. Remember how we both stared, spellbound, at it?"
"The Amiable Tiger. Aye," Johnathan says. And he shakes his head and laughs. "Just as Sam Endicott said it would be. But we did promise we'd never speak of it, Susanna. Why give it mention now, after all these years?" (Epilogue.63-66)
Susanna and Johnathan both have a memory that they just can't shake: when they saw that William came home on the Amiable Tiger, they were pretty freaked out. After all, Sam said a witch had told him that she would be harassing the Amiable Tiger to avenge Susanna's big bro, and while Johnathan and Susanna don't want to believe in witchcraft, they also can't forget this story. Looks like some memories definitely have a hard time dying off for these two.