How we cite our quotes: Paragraph
Quote #1
A yard like this is more comfortable than most people know. It is not just a yard. It is like an extended living room. When the hard clay is swept clean as a floor and the fine sand around the edges lined with tiny, irregular grooves, anyone can come and sit and look up into the elm tree and wait for the breezes that never come inside the house. (1)
Our narrator doesn't exactly live in a castle. But this description of her yard shows that she appreciates the simple pleasures the place has to offer.
Quote #2
How long ago was it that the other house burned? Ten, twelve years? Sometimes I can still hear the flames and feel Maggie's arms sticking to me, her hair smoking and her dress falling off her in little black papery flakes. Her eyes seemed stretched open, blazed open by the flames reflected in them. (10)
With smoking hair, disappearing clothes, and distorted eyes, Maggie looks like something straight out of a horror movie. Of all the ways the narrator could've told us about the fire that destroyed her house, she chooses to tell it like this. What's the effect of telling us about the fire this way?
Quote #3
And Dee. I see her standing off under the sweet gum tree she used to dig gum out of; a look of concentration on her face as she watched the last dingy gray board of the house fall in toward the red-hot brick chimney. Why don't you do a dance around the ashes? I'd wanted to ask her. She had hated the house that much. (10)
Living next to a tree that's basically a gumball machine—what's not to love? So what's Dee's problem with this house?