How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"He's a good man," she said. "He looks after the ones that get here sick and hurt."
"What do you mean, that get here hurt?" I asked.
"Hurt," she said. "A lot of them get here with burns, for instance."
I was confused. "I don't get why they would have burns," I persisted.
She looked at me for so long that I felt edgy. "Cigarette burns," she said. "On their backs." (8.107-112)
Even after she begins to understand how Mattie gathers and harbors refugees, Taylor still has very little understanding of the world they're fleeing from. Because her own life has been free of violence and torture, it hardly occurs to her that such kinds of experience might be common in other peoples' lives.
Quote #5
"That's not fair. You think you're the foreigner here, and I'm the American, and I just look the other way while the President or somebody sends down this and that, shiploads of telephones to torture people with. But nobody asked my permission, okay? [...] Half the time I have no idea what's going on around me here." (9.36)
Estevan suggests to Taylor that Americans find it easiest not to know about their own complicity in violence and injustice. Taylor refuses to accept this. Do you think her counterargument is valid? In cases like this, does ignorance mean the same thing as innocence?
Quote #6
Try as I would, I couldn't understand this. I was no longer so stupid as to ask why they didn't call the police, but still I couldn't see why they hadn't at least tried to get her back if they knew the police had taken her, and where. "Don't be upset with me," I said. "I know I'm ignorant, I'm sorry. Just explain it to me." (9.48)
Through Estevan, Taylor learns more about the world than she knew previously. Does this knowledge change her in any way? If so, how?