How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #1
He rode where he would always choose to ride, out where the western fork of the old Comanche road [was] coming down out of the Kiowa country […]. At the hour he'd always choose when the shadows were long and the ancient road was shaped before him in the rose and canted light like a dream of the past where the painted ponies and the riders of that lost nation came down out of the north with their faces chalked and their long hair plaited and each armed for war which was their life and the women and children and women with children at their breasts all of them pledged in blood and redeemable in blood only. (18)
What could the meaning of "pledged in blood and redeemable in blood only" be here? What kind of values is the narrator trying to ascribe to the Comanches?
Quote #2
There was an old horseskull in the brush and he squatted and picked it up and turned it in his hands. Frail and brittle. Bleached paper white. He squatted in the long light holding it, the comicbook teeth loose in their sockets. The joint in the cranium like a ragged welding of the bone plates. The run of sand in the brainbox when he turned it. (20)
John Grady lingers at length over this fragile horse skull early in the novel. What is the significance of the descriptive terms used here—its fragility, and the way the sand passes through it? Why focus so much on the details of a single horse skull?
Quote #3
You every think about dyin?
Yeah. Some. You?
Yeah. Some. You think there's a heaven?
Yeah. Dont you?
I dont know. Yeah. Maybe. You think you can believe in heaven if you dont believe in hell?
I guess you can believe what you want to.
Rawlins nodded. You think about all the stuff that can happen to you, he said. There aint no end to it. (1391-7)
Rawlins has a tendency to wonder about the afterlife when in danger, as he does here when he and John are on the run after attempting to steal back Blevins' horse. The lack of resolution from this discussion suggests that the answers to such questions are ultimately unknowable, or perhaps merely distractions.