American Pastoral Appearances Quotes

After the bombing, the Swede's present, past, and future and everything he sees around him is no longer possible to understand or express. This is Roth's prose at its best: think of the horror in the beauty in the image of seeing your life as a stutterer's thought. But, hey, the Swede is assuming that a stutterer's thoughts are also stuttered. Given the situation with Merry, we won't get on his case too much for that.

This comment from Rita bursts apart the Swede's image of Rita as an innocent, young student. It also points to the importance Merry places on images: she clearly idolizes the perfect and adored Audrey Hepburn.

The Swede, like Zuckerman, says this a lot. In this case, he's talking about Dawn. After her face lift he thinks she's going to continue on a downward spiral. Instead, she recovers… at least on the surface.