How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"You f-f-ucking madman! You heartless mi-mi-mi-miserable m-monster!" (3.138)
Merry is addressing Lyndon Johnson in 1968, when she's sixteen. She blames him for letting the Vietnam War go on. It's a study in communication because Merry is talking to him while he's on TV. She can hear him, but he can't hear her. She feels powerless.
Quote #5
He had been admitted into a mystery more bewildering even than Merry's stuttering: there was no fluency anywhere. It was all stuttering. In bed at night, he pictured the whole of his life as a stuttering mouth and a grimacing face […] (3.93)
This is the Swede's grim vision of life, after Merry detonates the bomb and disappears for five years. After this event, nothing in life makes any sense to him at all.