How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Thinking: this journey will be the axle of my life. (3.4)
What's with the axle metaphor? Is Inman about to open a friendly, hometown garage? If we think of an axle as the thing around which a wheel turns, it makes more sense. Inman's life will turn around during this journey, partly because it will determine whether he'll be free of the burden of war or not.
Quote #5
The road, they said, was a place apart, a country of its own ruled by no government but natural law, and its one characteristic was freedom. (5.127)
Is the road this way for Inman? There's definitely some natural law goin' down. Nature has some clear rules, like "Don't disturb bears." But lots of the time human rules seem to intrude on Inman's experience of the road.
Quote #6
And then at some point the white man said a strange thing. He said that someday the world might be ordered so that when a man uses the term slave it be only metaphoric. (5.128)
This doesn't sound so strange to us twenty-first-century readers—fortunately! But to Inman, who grew up in a country with slavery, maybe it does sound unexpected. What would it take for him to imagine a world where everyone can be free?