How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #4
Shrouded in the black thunderheads the distant lightning glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry smoke. As if repairs were under way at some flawed place in the iron dark of the world. (973)
The simile linking lightning and machinery suggests that the natural world isn't just there, but has its own reactions and processes, not so different from our own mechanical creations, which we can only glimpse dimly.
Quote #5
They pulled the wet saddles off the horses and hobbled them and walked off in separate directions through the chaparral to stand spraddlelegged clutching their knees and vomiting. The browsing horses jerked their heads up. It was no sound they'd ever before […] something imperfect and malformed lodged in the heart of being. A thing smirking deep in the eyes of grace itself like a gorgon in an autumn pool. (1029)
How would you break down the closing simile in this passage—what kind of image does it create to compare landscape, grace, and a gorgon (or medusa)? How does the gender of medusa and its relationship to landscape impact the meaning?
Quote #6
Before the colt could struggle up John Grady had squatted on its neck and pulled its head up and to one side and was holding the horse by the muzzle with the long bony head pressed against his chest and the hot sweet breath of it flooding up from the dark wells of its nostrils over his face and neck like news from another world. (1584)
John's breaking a wild horse here, and the literal otherworldliness of the animal sets a contrast between tame horses and those who still belong to nature. Despite physical proximity in this passage, and despite John's familiarity with horses, it seems more like an alien encounter.