How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #7
You are not the first Americans to be here, said the captain. In this place. I have friends in this place and you will be making these arrangements with these peoples. […] You stay here you going to die. Then come other problems. Papers is lost. Peoples cannot be found. […] No one wants to have these troubles. Who can say that some body was here? We dont have this body. Some crazy person, he can say that God is here. But everybody knows that God is no here. (2692, 2698)
The captain's corruption suggests a critique of the legal system—there is a known procedure ("arrangements") and familiarity dealing with foreigners, yet due to their lack of funds, John Grady and Rawlins don't seem to fit into this notion of what "arrangements" Americans should be able to make. The captain's hedging, bureaucratic language, feigning ignorance, heightens the sense that this failure is institutional.
Quote #8
The prison was no more than a small walled village and within it occurred a constant seethe of barter and exchange […] and within this bartering ran a constant struggle for status and position. Underpinning it all like the fiscal standard in commercial societies lay a bedrock of depravity and violence where in an egalitarian absolute every man was judged by a single standard and that was his readiness to kill. (2716)
How might a willingness to kill be like "a fiscal standard in commercial societies"? Does the particular choice of metaphor (money) have any significance here? Can you please also make a connection to Wu-Tang Clan's hit song "Cash Rules Everything Around Me"? Thanks.
Quote #9
At a crossroads station somewhere on the other side of Paredón they picked up five farmworkers who spoke to him with great circumspection and courtesy […]. He drew on his cigarette. He looked at their faces. One of them older than the rest nodded at his cheap new clothes.
Él va a ver a su novia [he's going to see his girlfriend], he said.
They looked at him earnestly and he nodded and said that it was true.
Ah, they said. Qué bueno. And after and for a long time to come he'd have reason to evoke the recollection of those smiles and to reflect upon the good will which provoked them for it had power to protect and to confer honor and to strengthen resolve and it had power to heal men and to bring them to safety long after all other resources were exhausted. (3274-81)
Brief, tender moments such as this illustrate a much less hard-edged vision of Mexico, where common folk have common decency, and is repeated in the various offers of lodging and courtesy that the travelers encounter. This one is perhaps the most striking, due to the sweeping conclusions it reaches and because it is one of the few moments in the novel that looks ahead to John Grady's future.