How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #7
The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community one of sorrow […]. In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will. (3420)
Alfonsa's statement that grief creates community seems to contradict the isolation in death that exists elsewhere in the novel. Is this a rule that applies to some characters in the novel but not others? Does John's grief over anyone in the novel at any point create a form of "community"?
Quote #8
When he reached [the doe] she lay in her blood in the grass and he knelt with the rifle and put his hand on her neck and she looked at him and her eyes were warm and wet and there was no fear in them and she died. He sat watching her for a long time. He thought about the captain and wondered if he were alive and he thought about Blevins […]. The sky was dark and a cold wind ran through the bajada and in the dying light a cold blue cast had turned the doe's eyes to but one thing more of things she lay among in that darkening landscape. Grass and blood. Blood and stone. (3789)
The doe's lack of fear seems to coincide with the way in which it becomes merely one other thing in the landscape. Why does John show such tenderness toward the doe after a series of violent acts toward people (killing the cuchillero, taking the captain hostage and nearly killing him)?
Quote #9
He stood hat in hand over the unmarked earth. This woman who had worked for his family fifty years. She had cared for his mother as a baby and she had worked for his family long before his mother was born and she had known and cared for the wild Grady boys who were his mother's uncles and who had all died so long ago and he stood holding his hat and he called her his abuela and he said goodbye to her in Spanish and then turned and put on his hat and turned his wet face to the wind and for a moment he held out his hands as if to steady himself or as if to bless there ground there or perhaps as if to slow the world that was rushing away and seemed to care nothing for the old or the young or rich or poor or dark or pale or he or she. Nothing for the living or the dead. (4049)
This late scene encapsulates many of the novel's ideas about death and the world. While on the one hand she has deep significance for John and his family, Abuela's departure seems final and arbitrary. The novel here delivers a definitive statement about the cruelty of the world toward those who leave it.