How we cite our quotes: Paragraph
Quote #4
She followed the track, swaying through the quiet bare fields, through the little strings of trees silver in their dead leaves, past cabins silver from weather, with the doors and windows boarded shut, all like old women under a spell sitting there. "I walking in their sleep," she said, nodding her head vigorously. (29)
This passage is a really vivid moment of description, but more than that, it is a moment in which Phoenix presents herself as a dream creature passing through the subconscious of the personified cabins. It's an interesting reversal from the way we usually see reality because it depicts an inanimate setting as the true witness to the passage of time and reality, and people as the figments that weave in and out fleetingly.
Quote #5
A big black dog with a lolling tongue came up out of the weeds by the ditch. She was meditating, and not ready, and when he came at her she only hit him a little with her cane. Over she went in the ditch, like a little puff of milkweed.
Down there, her sense drifted away. A dream visited her, and she reached her hand up, but nothing reached down and gave her a pull. So she lay there and presently went to talking. "Old woman," she said to herself, "that black dog come up out of the weeds to stall you off, and now he sitting on his fine tail, smiling at you." (32-33)
Talking aloud to herself, analyzing a dog's facial expressions, having a dream so real that she reaches her hands out in her sleep, meditating… Yup, Phoenix is on an alternate reality roll here.
Quote #6
But she was slowly bending forward by that time, further and further forward, the lids stretched down over her eyes, as if she were doing this in her sleep. Her chin was lowered almost to her knees. The yellow palm of her hand came out from the fold of her apron. Her fingers slid down and along the ground under the piece of money with the grace and care they would have in lifting an egg from under a setting hen. Then she slowly straightened up; she stood erect, and the nickel was in her apron pocket. A bird flew by. Her lips moved. "God watching me the whole time. I come to stealing." (51)
Check it out—another juggernaut of alternate reality. Phoenix has drifted into a semi-conscious state where actions seem to happen without clear control and where the spiritual world readily manifests itself in the physical world. The thing that catapults her into this twilight zone? Money. Phoenix is very poor, and seeing a nickel on the ground is as unusual as stumbling upon a purple space alien might be. This passage emphasizes that Phoenix's real world is completely different than the world of those with economic resources.