Bastard Out of Carolina Society and Class Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #4

"Look at that car. Just like any n***** trash, getting something like that."

"What'd you expect? Look what he married."

"Her and her kids sure go with that car…" (6.64-66)

Well, Glen's brothers certainly don't have any trouble looking down on different kinds of people. They also really enjoy talking about it. Anney has married "up," and the Waddells are totally not going to let her—or her daughters—forget it. The novel shows up the Waddells, though: Glen is ten times worse than all of the Boatwrights combined.

Quote #5

It looked like there were three of them down there, taking turns looking out, fully fascinated with us as we were with them. (6.66)

Parallelism, folks. Bone is the one to realize that the black kids downstairs are probably similar in a lot of ways to her and her cousins; later, this realization will allow her to relate racism to the classism she herself perpetually experiences. Her cousins, on the other hand, go on spouting the same racist stuff we hear from Wade.

Quote #6

No hunger would make me take anything else of theirs. I could feel a kind of heat behind my eyes that lit up everything I glanced at. It was dangerous, that heat. It wanted to pour out and burn everything up, everything they had that we didn't have, everything that made them think they were better than us. (7.69)

Being made to feel inferior definitely fires up some serious pride (among other things) in Bone. At various moments in the novel, Bone uses different metaphors to describe how being called and treated like trash makes her feel; see if you can spot them.