How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
It was mushy. Mama and Daddy Glen always hugging and rubbing on each other, but it was powerful too. Sex. (5.68)
Bone is realizing that sexual attraction is, to use her great choice of words, "powerful." Anney's love for her children versus her love for Glen is going to become the central conflict later in the novel, and this is important set-up that helps us understand that Anney is pulled in both directions.
Quote #5
"I just don't understand sometimes, Bone, how things got so messed up, the simplest things—me and Teresa, Mama and Daddy, your mama and Glen. Hell, even Ruth and Travis. You know, Travis left Ruth once when their kids were little, just took off for two months and never said a thing. And anybody can see how he loves her. Sometimes I just don't understand." (9.54)
Picture this: two people love each other. Simple, right? Well, maybe if you live in a vacuum. Lots of things can stress out a relationship, as we have seen from Exhibit A: The Boatwrights. What makes these relationships so difficult? All relationships have problems, but what about these problems?
Quote #6
"Still, I look at Glen and I can see he an't never been loved like he needed to be. But the boy's deeper and darker than I can figure out. It's you I worry about. I know the kind of love you got in you. I know how you feel about Glen. You'd give your life to save him, and maybe that'll make it come out right, and maybe it won't." (9.98)
See Glen's "Character Analysis" for more on how a lack of fatherly love has caused him some serious daddy issues. That aside, what we're encountering here is the scary possibility that love won't be enough to save the situation. Anney, on the other hand, seems to hang on to the belief that love will hold everything together. Talk about a sticky situation. How is the novel trying to reconcile love with violence? Or is it?